WAITING TO SEE: Officials at New Mexico’s largest utility say it’s too early to tell if new EPA regulations will affect plans to retrofit coal-fired units at the San Juan Generating Station.
By Rob Nikolewski │ New Mexico Watchdog
SANTA FE – Environmentalists were celebrating and a lot of energy companies were grumbling after the Obama administration rolled out new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on Monday but New Mexico’s largest utility company was taking a wait-and-see attitude.
Saying that the EPA draft rule “is a lengthy and complex document,” Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) senior vice president of public policy Ron Darnell said in a statement that “it’s too early to tell how it will affect PNM specifically.”
Or, how much extra it will cost PNM customers.
The new EPA rules will set national guidelines on carbon dioxide on existing power plants for the first time, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions 30 percent nationwide.
One of the primary targets of the new regulations is the coal industry.
PNM’s San Juan Generating Station in the northwest corner of New Mexico contains four coal-fired generating units and the company has put forth a proposal to retire two of the coal units as a way to reduce regional haze. The other two units plan to be retrofitted with pollution controls.
Since the PNM plan, which received non-binding approval last year from the EPA and the New Mexico Environment Department, aims to reduce emissions 50 percent, PNM officials have been guardedly optimistic that Monday’s announcement will not effect the San Juan proposal.
“We appreciate that the EPA rule provides each state with significant flexibility in developing a compliance plan that recognizes unique opportunities and challenges,” Darnell said.
The San Juan plan still has to be approved by the Public Regulation Commission as well as the EPA.
With or without the new EPA regulations, PNM customers were going to pay more.
In early 2013, PNM estimated its proposal would cost the company between $400 million and $430 million. Judging from rough estimates made at the time, the plan would cost PNM customers a little more than $30 more per year.
“On the one hand, I’m pleased that (New Mexico appears) to be well positioned,” New Mexico Environment Secretary Ray Flynn told Associated Press. “On the other hand, I still remain concerned about impacts to consumers. There’s no question that EPA’s action is going to result in increased costs for electric generation around the country.”
Nationally, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed the EPA regulations could cost up to $50 billion a year in GDP and keep 224,000 jobs a year from being created.
“Sure, energy companies are going to howl, but they can’t get a free pass to dump harmful waste into our air any longer, and they’re fully capable of innovating their way to solutions,” said National Audubon Society president and CEO David Yarnold.
The EPA says the regulations will save 6,600 lives and more than $50 billion a year in health care costs tied to air pollution.
Both of New Mexico’s U.S. senators, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, hailed the decision.
“Climate change is a fact that is a problem in New Mexico today and not just at some far off date in the future,” Heinrich said. “The longer we wait to act, the more difficult and expensive the solutions will be and the more unpredictable our weather will become.”
But the only Republican in the New Mexico Capitol Hill delegation blasted the new regulations.
“The president and the EPA are using these regulations to force states into using cap-and-trade systems that could not even pass in the Senate with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority,” said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mexico. “The administration’s radical war on coal is nothing more than a war on the poor.”
Contact Rob Nikolewski at rnikolewski@watchdog.org and follow him on Twitter @robnikolewski
