Movie buffs are accustomed to watching for small details in films called Easter eggs. These are tiny visual or verbal references that may be a nod to another movie, foreshadowing, or a hidden message. The EPA’s proposed regulation for greenhouse gases emitted by power plants contains some similar nuggets, but rather than Easter eggs, these are more like rotten eggs, and they reveal the heavy influence of the fossil fuel industry.

The most glaring evidence of fossil industry lobbying is the fact that battery storage as a tool for emissions reduction is completely omitted from consideration. The only technologies the EPA is advocating for – hydrogen co-firing and carbon capture and storage – both perpetuate fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure such as pipelines and combustion turbines. The EPA is also asking for input on how to incorporate burning hydrogen in “low load combustion turbines,” sometimes called peaker plants – the plants that are most likely to be sited in low-wealth communities and communities of color. The EPA is doing this while acknowledging elsewhere in the document that burning hydrogen emits high levels of NOx, a pollutant that harms the communities that surround these plants and that cannot be captured effectively in peaker plants. The EPA is effectively asking how it can add even more pollution burden to these communities. That is the first rotten egg.

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hhttps://www.renewableenergyworld.com/policy-regulation/rotten-eggs-in-the-epa-power-plant-rule/