In December 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), the first national standards for mercury, arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act Amendments, signed by President Bush in 1990. The EPA says that MATS and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), issued earlier this year, are the most significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the Acid Rain Program of the 1990s. An associated Presidential Memorandum directs EPA to implement the MATS in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability.
For many power utilities this was not unexpected and they have been preparing for it. First Energy announced in January its intention to shut down a total of nine coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. The reasons for the closures are believed to be both economic and MATS.
FirstEnergy Generation Corp. has announced that it intends to replace some of its coal-fired generation with natural gas-fired generation. One motivating factor id that northeast Ohio is experiencing a natural gas boom involving the Utica shale formation. The first installation is expected to be 800 megawatts of gas-fired turbines at the Eastlake Plant in Eastlake, Ohio. Other steps including transmission system enhancements are being looked at to ensure reliable electric service in northern Ohio after the coal-fired power plants are retired. The turbines would be in service by the spring of 2015 when the MATS regulations take effect.
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