On April 6th of 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed regulation, known as the “Transport Rule", that would force deep nitrogen oxide reductions from power plants in 25 states under the auspices of meeting Clean Air Act “good neighbor" obligations for ozone pollution.
The proposal would impose aggressive emission reduction requirements under a stringent trading regime and force the premature retirement of significant coal unit baseload capacity. This is expected to increase costs to electric consumers and may pose electric reliability concerns.
In its final rule, EPA should carefully consider issues related to electric reliability and compliance costs. In doing so, EPA should work with national and regional reliability entities to conduct a detailed grid impact analysis.
