{"id":1216,"date":"2011-12-13T12:14:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T17:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/southern-company-claims-to-be-incompetent-regarding-new-epa-rules.html"},"modified":"2011-12-13T12:14:53","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T17:14:53","slug":"southern-company-claims-to-be-incompetent-regarding-new-epa-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/southern-company-claims-to-be-incompetent-regarding-new-epa-rules.html","title":{"rendered":"Southern Company claims to be incompetent regarding new EPA rules"},"content":{"rendered":"Why can’t Southern Company do what other power companies can do\nin implementing the new coal plant pollution control rules EPA\nis about to promulgate?\n

\n\n<\/a>\nElizabeth Shogren wrote for NPR today,\n\nEPA To Unveil Stricter Rules For Power Plants<\/a>.\nShe described new rules for coal plants EPA is going to release in the next\nfew weeks, including controls on mercury, “arsenic, acid gases and other pollutants.”\nSouthern Company doesn’t like that.\n

\n“It’s physically impossible to build the controls, the generation, the\n\n<\/a>\ntransmission and the pipelines needed in three years,” says Anthony\nTopazi, chief operating officer for Southern Company, which provides\nelectricity to nearly 4 million homes and hundreds of thousands of\nbusinesses in the Southeast.\n

\nTopazi says electricity rates will go up, putting marginal companies out\nof business. He says unless his company gets six years, it will not be\nable to keep the lights on.\n

\n“We will experience rolling blackouts or rationing power if we don’t\nhave simply the time to comply,” Topazi says.\n<\/blockquote>\nOther power companies see no problem:\n\n\n

\nPaul Allen, senior vice president of Constellation Energy, says that’s\n\n<\/a>\nnot his company experience. Constellation installed controls for mercury\nand other pollutants on its big power plant outside Baltimore, and he\nsays it took a little more than two years. At the peak of construction,\nit put 1,300 people to work as well.\n

\n“We don’t believe jobs will be destroyed, and we do think that it’s time\nto get on with this work,” Allen says.\n

\nAllen says the power industry had plenty of warning that this was coming.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo why can’t Southern Company do it if Constellation Energy can?\n

\nMaybe if Southern Co.’s offshoot Georgia Power wasn’t so busy\n\npassing through\nConstruction Work in Progress (CWIP) for new nuclear plants to customers,\nand getting permission from GA PSC to pass nuclear cost overruns to customers,<\/a>\nthey’d be able to focus on cleaning up coal plants.\nOr, better, get on with clean renewable energy (solar, wind, conservation,\nand efficiency) and shut down some coal plants.\n

\n-jsq\n

\nPS: Owed to Seth Gunning.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why can’t Southern Company do what other power companies can do in implementing the new coal plant pollution control rules EPA is about to promulgate? Elizabeth Shogren wrote for NPR today, EPA To Unveil Stricter Rules For Power Plants. She described new rules for coal plants EPA is going to release in the next few […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,142,14,264,265,16,18,2,104,21,22,32,23,24,36],"tags":[3271,8753,631,8722,8707,8708,1809,8737,8715,8713,108],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-cwip","category-economy","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-environment","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-nuclear","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-arsenic","tag-coal","tag-constellation-energy","tag-epa","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia-power","tag-mercury","tag-nuclear","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-southern-company"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-jC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}