The Bush administration has decided to make it easier for electric utility companies to undertake improvements and repairs at older coal-fired power plants. The decision will give utilities more leeway under the so-called “new source review” requirements of the Clean Air Act to upgrade and modernize equipment in ways that will increase energy efficiency and reduce pollution. Despite this, some state governments, under influence from environmental pressure groups, have chosen to challenge the reforms in the courts. This is because the changes will allow the companies to make these upgrades without having to install costly new pollution control equipment. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper should be commended. He has shown concern for both the environment and utility customers and resisted this pressure.

The purpose of the rules change is to enable utilities to make better use of existing facilities by allowing upgrades that will increase energy efficiency, i.e., burn less coal per unit of electricity. If less coal is burned, less pollution is emitted. Under rules put in place by the Clinton administration, routine repairs or plant modernizations are categorized as “major plant modifications.” This requires the utility to install expensive pollution control equipment that is unrelated to the repair or modernization.

Over the 40 years or more life of a coal-fired electricity plant continuous maintenance is required. When replacing worn-out parts, utilities typically take advantage of new technology. For example, it makes sense to replace original turbine blades and boilers with more modern and efficiency enhancing designs, taking advantage of computer-aided technology that is frequently less polluting. Under the Clinton era rules, many of these upgrades are made too costly and are not being pursued. Instead, worn-out components are replaced with exactly the same old technology thus avoiding the “major plant modification” designation. This wastes resources and often results in higher emissions. Rules meant to reduce pollution are causing more pollution than necessary.

Coal provides more than half of the nation’s power. The EPA should be helping to facilitate ways of making power generation from coal more efficient and less polluting, not hindering it. Coal is plentiful, and it is being burned cleaner than at any time in history. While over the last 20 years the use of coal to produce electricity has risen more than 60 percent, all categories of air pollution have declined. From 1981 to 2000 ambient levels of sulfur dioxide declined 50 percent, nitrogen oxide 27 percent, and ozone 12 percent. Certainly a number of factors, including cleaner running cars, have contributed to these improvements. But part of this trend can be attributed to coal that has lower sulfur content and more efficient electricity generating technologies of the kind that President Bush is attempting to facilitate.

Over the past decade there has been a great deal of pressure to substitute natural gas for coal. This is because of the perception that global warming is a serious environmental threat, ignoring temperature data from satellites and weather balloons showing no warming trend for more than two decades. Natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal, the greenhouse gas seen as the culprit behind the global warming scare. It should be pointed out that carbon dioxide is essential for all life on Earth and is considered an “air born fertilizer” for vegetation growth. It is not a pollutant. Succumbing to the politics of global warming, nearly all power plants built in recent years use natural gas as the basic fuel. Consequently, as gas supplies have tightened, demand and therefore price have soared. Given that domestic supplies of coal are plentiful and can offset some of the high prices of natural gas, the EPA should ignore the junk science of global-warming hysteria and attempt to find ways of making the use of coal easier, not more difficult.

If opponents succeed in thwarting this rule change, utilities will be required to install costly new pollution controls when relatively minor upgrades are made to plant and equipment. Consumers and society will pay the price. On the other hand, upgrading power plants to improve energy efficiency would help keep prices down and improve air quality — to everyone’s benefit.