According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), power plants and refineries are responsible for 40 per cent of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Unlike the EU the US has not adopted a national emissions reduction target. In the EU the Energy Commissioner is planning to give member states two years to improve energy-saving efforts before imposing legally binding energy efficiency targets on member states unless they accelerate effort to cut GHG emissions 20 per cent by 2020.
In the US the EPA is requiring that electric utilities proposing new generating units or major modifications to existing units that result in a significant increase in emissions submit to a pre-construction review. Recently the EPA has sued Ameren Missouri, claiming that Ameren made major upgrades to its1.2 GW Rush Island coal-fired power plant without installing modern pollution control equipment. Ameren claims that the upgrades were routine maintenance.
The EPA plans to introduce new emissions performance standards for new and existing power plants and petroleum refineries under the Clean Air Act, to force some of the country's worst polluters to reduce carbon and other emissions. The new proposed standards for power plants will be released in July and for refineries in December 2011. Final decisions on the new standards will released in May 2012 and November 2012. The impetus for new standards is a result of a legal settlement with twelve states and others (New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, the District of Columbia and the city of New York), which sued the EPA for failing to update pollution standards for fossil fuel power plants and petroleum refineries.
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