On Tuesday, June 20, the state of Utah filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency’s Ozone Interstate Transport Rule, also known as the “Good Neighbor Plan.”
All of Utah’s major Republican leaders — Governor Spencer Cox, Attorney General Sean Reyes, Senate President J. Stuart Adams, House Speaker Brad Wilson, U.S. Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, and Representatives Chris Stewart, John Curtis, Burgess Owens and Blake Moore — issued a statement with the lawsuit opposing the plan.
“Utah’s measured, all-of-the-above energy policy has powered decades of prosperity by providing some of the country’s most reliable and affordable energy,” it read. “This balanced and commonsense approach has powered our state, fueled our economy, and maintained a high quality of life for Utahns. We have also dramatically decreased emissions and ozone on our own. However, the Biden administration has turned to executive rulemaking to enact policies that will force early closures of Utah power plants, putting reliable, affordable, and dispatchable power significantly at risk — and only in a few years.”
Details of the ‘Good Neighbor Plan’
The “Good Neighbor Plan,” finalized in March, forces 23 U.S. states to meet its clean air requirements by shutting down pollution from power plants and other industrial emissions. This is all for the sake of being a “good neighbor” to downwind states.
The EPA claimed that much of Colorado’s air pollution was coming from oil and gas activity and emissions from power plants in Utah. In response, the Sierra Club applauded the plan, and agreed that Rocky Mountain Power’s coal-fired Hunter and Huntington plants are two of the worst sources of regional haze pollution in the West.
Rocky Mountain Power already has plans to retire or convert these two coal-fired plants by the end of the year 2032, but the EPA’s rule would rush that plan.
Utah’s Republican leaders are asking the D.C. Court of Appeals to review the rule, calling it a “power grab” and asserting it threatens the state’s ability to provide affordable and reliable energy to its own people.
Meanwhile, Pacificorp has plans to replace the two Emery County plants by 2032 with nuclear power facilities using the same Natrium technology as another project in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Utah’s third coal-fired plant, the Intermountain Power Plant north of Delta, is already scheduled for decommission in 2025, when it will be replaced with a natural gas plant. That project will also be the first of its kind in its ability to burn hydrogen.
– The Byway
Feature image caption: Rocky Mountain Power’s Huntington power plant in March 2015. The company already has plans to retire or convert the plant by 2032. The Environmental Protection Agency’s new “Good Neighbor Plan” could shut the plant down too soon, causing problems for Utah’s power in the meantime. Courtesy Ravell Call/Deseret News.