Davis Eases Power Plant Pollution Rules

Gov. Gray Davis agreed Monday to lift air emission limits on heavily polluting power plants and allow them to run at capacity this summer as long as the electricity they produce is sold in the state.

State officials said the plants must be pressed into use to avoid blackouts.

Davis’ executive order lets the generators build the cost of air pollution fines into the price the state pays for electricity produced by natural gas-fired power plants, said Catherine Witherspoon of the California Air Resources Board.

Municipal utility districts--including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--and independent power companies could supply as much as 1,200 megawatts from so-called peaker plants, facilities that generally are permitted to operate for only a few hundred hours a year because they pollute so heavily. That is enough power for more than 1 million homes.

Other gas-fired power plants that have been shut down because of air pollution restrictions also could be started up as a result of the order.

In a news conference Monday, state officials said the order will have the effect of lowering air pollution by limiting the use of far dirtier diesel generators, which industry could use if power supplies are threatened.

“If we don’t get every last megawatt we can [from natural gas-fired plants],” said Witherspoon of the air board, “we will see people turning to diesel more frequently.”

Added Kellan Fluckiger, a top energy advisor to Davis: “If you don’t run these, you’re either going to have outages or you’re going to run something dirtier.”

Fluckiger said the order expands “the number of hours these things can run and the amount of energy they can produce.”

New natural gas-fired power plants emit about half a pound per megawatt-hour of operation of ozone-producing pollutants. The plants affected by the order emit between two and five pounds of oxides of nitrogen per megawatt-hour.

If the plants are pressed into operation for 200,000 megawatt-hours this summer, there will be between 400,000 and 1 million additional pounds of oxides of nitrogen emitted into the air.

The state probably will end up paying the fees associated with the extra pollution through higher electricity prices. The fees amount to $7.50 per pound of oxides of nitrogen--or $7.5 million if the plants operate for 200,000 hours--and $1.10 per pound of carbon monoxide emissions. The money would be used to reduce air pollution from other sources.

“Under this order, dirty power plants can run as long as they want and pollute as much as they want so long as they pay into a fund,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Our concern is that there’s no guarantee that the fund will result in emission reductions any time soon.”

A Ventura County air pollution control official said that running one peaking power plant operated by Reliant Energy for one hour is the equivalent of adding 20,000 new cars to Ventura County highways for an hour. Reliant Energy could not be reached for comment Monday night.

“To the extent that they run when not needed for an emergency, it’s going to put more air pollution into Ventura County skies and it’s going to make our air dirtier,” said Dick Baldwin, air pollution control officer for Ventura County.

Los Angeles DWP Director David Wiggs hailed the order, saying it was needed so the city can sell the state as much as 1,000 megawatts of power this summer.

“This was the issue we had to have solved or we could not offer any of our excess capacity to the state,” Wiggs said.

He added, however, that the city and state have not yet agreed on a price for the power. Wiggs said the city is “negotiating to get our cost as low as we can legally charge” so that customers of the city utility district are not subsidizing consumers in the rest of the state. Municipal utility districts elsewhere in the state also are expected to benefit from the order.

Though the order was aimed at spurring municipal utilities to sell power to the state, it also applies to independent power producers such as Reliant Energy of Houston and Duke of North Carolina--both of which have called on Davis to ease air pollution restrictions on their old natural gas-fired facilities.

“This puts more money in the Texans’ pockets and more air pollution in Ventura County residents’ lungs,” said Baldwin of Ventura County.

Doug Allard, a Santa Barbara County air pollution control officer, also said it seems as if the governor is giving private power generators much of what they had sought.

“We have serious concerns about the order,” said Feuer of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s taking the discretion away from local air districts to regulate power plants in their region.”

*

Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this story.

RELATED STORY

Utility: Edison plans to raise $1 billion in debt restructuring. C1