By Pam Kasey

The price of natural gas will have to be five times what it is today before another coal-fired power plant will be built in the U.S.

That's Howard Herzog's reaction to the power plant greenhouse gas emissions rule proposed March 27 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Herzog is senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative and its Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program.

Every coal-fired power plant proposed in the U.S. from now on will have to capture carbon dioxide, or CO2, and store it away if the cumbersomely named "Standards of Performance for Greenhouse Gas Emissions for New Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units" rule is implemented.

"Based on the rule, I don't think anyone would consider building a new coal plant unless the price of gas gets above $10 per million British thermal units," Herzog said. "Today it's close to $2."

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Beckley Register-Herald
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The Spruce No. 1 coal mine case is a welcome crimp in federal power

In 2007, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit that authorized Mingo Logan Coal Co., a subsidiary of Arch Coal, to dump material from its Spruce No. 1 coal mine into nearby streams.

The company needed the permit to expand the mine.

The mine eventually would have led to the employment of 250 people and the production over 15 years of about 44 million tons of coal.

But when the Obama administration took office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asserted the power to review such permits, and in 2011 revoked the Spruce No.1 permit.

This was unprecedented. Never before had the agency retroactively revoked a permit the Corps had granted.

The company sued and on Friday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., an Obama appointee, ruled the EPA had overstepped its bounds.