NC power providers are worried about EPA’s greenhouse gas proposal. Here’s why.

North Carolina utilities are warning that power-plant emissions rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency could threaten the reliability of the power grid by depending too much on the buildout of hydrogen power and carbon capture and storage.

The federal agency is proposing limiting carbon dioxide emissions by making utilities install the technologies at coal- and natural gas-fired power plants in the 2030s. That is meant to curb climate-warming gases while also protecting nearby communities — often disproportionately made up of people of color or people with lower incomes — from pollution.

In comments submitted to the EPA, Duke Energy and the state’s electric co-ops argue carbon capture is unlikely to work in North Carolina and that firing hydrogen at the levels required under the rule would require the technology to advance at a rapid pace while necessitating the construction of an entire supply network.

These efforts would be expensive, they warned, while making the grid unreliable and distracting from the transition to emissions-free energy by forcing utilities to spend money on technology that doesn’t yet exist at sufficient scale.

The EPA put forth the new carbon reduction proposal after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in the case known as West Virginia v. EPA. In that case, justices ruled that the EPA cannot require utilities to shift their generation but instead must mandate that utilities control pollution at the source.

Duke called for changes to the EPA’s proposal, including adding a reliability provision that would let utilities burn more fossil fuels to keep power on, allowing existing natural gas plants to run at 50% of their capacity before emissions limits kick in and letting utilities turn coal plants into gas-fired power plants.

“With some significant but reasonable changes to the proposed rule, we can achieve important carbon reduction goals while keeping the energy transition more affordable and reliable for customers. We look forward to working with policymakers on these critical changes to protect customer reliability and affordability,” Erin Culbert, a Duke Energy spokeswoman, wrote in a statement.

Hydrogen doubts

Right now, Duke is working on a pilot project in which it is co-firing hydrogen at one of its Florida natural gas plants. The utility said it expects a small amount of hydrogen to be blended into natural gas-fired plants by the mid-2030s, increasing gradually over time.

Duke would generate energy with solar power and then store it by converting it to hydrogen that could be stored for later use at its power plants. To generate enough hydrogen to power 30% of its projected gas plants in the Carolinas by 2032 as the EPA wants, Duke wrote, it would need to build 4 gigawatts of solar and the transmission to carry it. Right now, North Carolina has 8.4 gigawatts of solar panels installed statewide.

That hydrogen would also require 4 gigawatts of electrolyzers, the equipment that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. Duke noted that the equipment it needs in the Carolinas alone is more than exists in the world right now.

And even if it were to build out the supply chain, the pipelines and the electrolyzers, Duke warned, the cost of running those machines would be prohibitive.

“Because the hydrogen would be so expensive to produce, transport and burn in this time frame, those units equipped to burn it would not be dispatched to produce electricity for customers,” Duke wrote.

To accomplish the 96% hydrogen-fired power plants the EPA would want to see effective by 2038, Duke said, it would need to build 28 gigawatts apiece of solar and electrolyzers. That would require enough solar panels to cover an area about five times the size of the District of Columbia.

Duke Energy is set to introduce the next version of its plan to reduce carbon emissions this week, starting with the expected filing Tuesday of a resource generation plan in South Carolina. That will be followed Thursday in North Carolina with what is expected to be a virtual identical plan for Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress.

Gudrun Thompson, a senior attorney and the energy program lead at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Duke’s argument that hydrogen technology isn’t “adequately demonstrated” is inconsistent with what it has put forth in carbon plan filings.

In those documents, Duke has said new gas plants would be built with the capability to co-fire with hydrogen, an effort to convince regulators to allow the company to move forward with investments in fossil fuel infrastructure amid growing concerns that they may need to be retired early, as many coal plants are now.

“They can’t argue that in one breath and tell EPA in another breath that these technologies aren’t adequately demonstrated,” Thompson told The News & Observer.

Urging a transition to renewables

Thompson added that she believes both carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen are adequately demonstrated to the degree the EPA needs them to be to enforce the Clean Air Act. Still, Thompson acknowledged that building them out isn’t likely to be cheap, noting that technology like utility-scale solar and wind power are available now.

“I would be very surprised if we got to 2035 and we’ve got a whole bunch of new gas plants co-firing hydrogen or utilities deciding to retrofit coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration because I just don’t think the economics are favorable for that and even in the utilities sector, folks are realizing it’s time to move away from fossil fuels,” Thompson said.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an environmental nonprofit that works in North Carolina, submitted a comment that said the new standards would encourage utilities to move away from coal and natural gas-fired power plants and toward renewables.

“Clean energy, such as solar and wind energy, has advanced dramatically in recent years and has often been the most cost effective source for new power generation even in the absence of inclusion of the cost of carbon emissions,” wrote Chris Carnevale, SACE’s climate advocacy director.

In urging the EPA to finalize the rule, Carnevale noted that the Clean Power Plan was first introduced about nine years ago and that utilities are completing resource plans that could be shaped by its guidance.

Keeping lights on in the winter will increasingly dictate how much power is needed, Duke wrote.

Co-ops say ‘unproven and aspirational’

Duke isn’t the only North Carolina electric provider with concerns about the EPA proposal. The North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation, which represents 26 member co-ops in the state, warned that the EPA plan risks a reliability crisis by failing to include safeguards for affordability or reliability.

By comparison, the corporation wrote in a comment to the EPA, North Carolina’s Carbon Plan includes a check-in every two years that allows the state’s Utilities Commission to adjust the generation mix.

The corporation also put forth an argument that the EPA’s proposal might not comply with the Supreme Court’s finding in West Virgina v. EPA because the costs of complying with the mandate are so high and the technologies required so far from adoption that utilities will need to build out renewables.

In this way, the corporation argued, the EPA is effectively accomplishing the very “generation shift” the justices banned in the West Virginia case.

The new standards, the corporation wrote, “are unachievable, based on technology that has not been adequately demonstrated, and that are so unproven and aspirational that they require premature closure or shifting of dispatchable generation to another source of generation more favored by EPA.”

The corporation has a goal of reaching a 50% reduction from 2005 carbon dioxide emissions levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Natural gas, it wrote, is key to maintaining reliability for the 2.5 million people who receive their power from a co-op in the state as that effort continues.

The Electric Membership Corporation also wrote that it does not believe carbon capture is a viable solution in North Carolina because there are no salt caverns where carbon could be stored and the state lacks a widespread oil industry that could use the carbon.

Firing hydrogen at the levels required under the rule hasn’t been done, the corporation argued, adding that access to the amounts of hydrogen needed to accomplish that isn’t assured.

The EPA could revisit power plant standards once the technology works, the corporation wrote, “But it may not act as soothsayer and set standards based on what it thinks will be adequately demonstrated in the future.”

This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.