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Issue link: https://coal.epubxp.com/i/131326
news AEP Executive Warns the White House American Electric Power Co.'s top executive is warning that stepped-up efforts by President Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-burning power plants could pose serious service reliability problems for the nation's power grid. After winning re-election to a second, four-year term last November, Obama has made no secret of his desire to press ahead with his "green energy" agenda, which includes curbs on power plant carbon dioxide emissions linked to global climate change. Columbus, Ohio-based AEP, the country's largest coal-reliant electric utility, has much at stake in the outcome of any GHG decisions made by the federal government. AEP already has announced plans to retire about 6,000 megawatts of older, coalfired capacity in a few years, mainly to comply with the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule. A crackdown on greenhouse gases by the White House and its hand-picked bureaucrats at the EPA could raise that total. ± B R E A K I N G N E W S Obama's EPA Pick Could be Bad News for Coal Environmental policy analysts at The Heartland Institute have condemned President Obama's choice of EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy to succeed a controversial Lisa Jackson as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Senior Fellow James Taylor said McCarthy has an "anti-energy" ideology and will use her post to implement "unprecedented restrictions on energy production and use that will further drive up energy prices," he added. A career environmental administrator, the 58-year-old McCarthy has worked under Republican governors in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where she developed legislation to close coal-fired power plants. She enjoys support among Washington Democrats including Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairs of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who 4 www.coalage.com CEO Nick Akins, during a late February conference call with analysts, acknowledged the controversial GHG issue has "picked up as everybody knows" in recent months. Akins, who succeeded Michael Morris as AEP chief in late 2011, then sounded a cautionary warning: "We have to be really rational in what we do with regard to greenhouse gases, particularly with existing units," he said. "If there's too dramatic a change too quickly on existing units, with technology not available, that would be a clear problem for the reliability of the grid and for customer prices going forward." If existing coal units are subjected to greenhouse gas regulations, he continued, "You're going to take a broad swath of the entire coal fleet in this country out, and that's not where we need to be," Akins said. Should the government elect to move forward with GHG regulations, Akins said he hopes major coal-burning utilities like AEP will be given a reasonable timetable to accommodate any changes that are necessary. praised McCarthy's "experience, intelligence, energy and unquestioned expertise" making her "the right person for the job." Over the past four years, the EPA and Jackson have come under heavy fire from many manufacturing and utility executives accusing her of imposing regulations that needlessly hurt jobs. Indeed, at one point at a 2011 event in Kentucky, McCarthy even told her audience that "the EPA is not the enemy." Such sentiments have done little to influence observers at Heartland like Executive Vice President Kenneth Haapala, who noted energy policies in Europe reliant on solar and wind power. "The results are grim: skyrocketing electrical costs for consumers, energy poverty and totally unreliable electricity systems kept working only by relying on fossil fuel plants or hydroelectric." March 2013