After months of delay, the Obama administration is about to unveil the first federal standards to explicitly limit greenhouse-gas emissions from new electric power plants — one of the chief sources of carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change.
According to people briefed by the Environmental Protection Agency, all existing plants — including the 300 or so coal-fired power plants that now release the highest level of these emissions and yet-to-be-built plants that have already received E.P.A. permits — will be grandfathered in at current levels, meaning they are exempt from the new proposed rule.
Under the new rule, expected to be announced this week, new power plants will have to emit no more than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energy produced. That standard permits the level of emissions achieved by natural gas-fired plants of the type generally built in the last few years, but would be too strict for almost all coal-fired power plants if they were not exempted. A new natural gas plant produces a little less than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. A coal plant produces about 1,800 pounds.
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