Attorneys general in 25 states, including Louisiana’s Liz Murrill, have sent an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to immediately halt a Biden administration rule that they say threatens to shutter the country’s remaining fleet of coal-fired power plants, Louisiana Illuminator reports.
Louisiana is at the forefront among the many states that have invested in the promise of carbon capture and storage as one way to mitigate greenhouse gasses. The idea is to capture the flue gas and then pipe it either to underground storage or sell it, thereby reducing the amount of greenhouse gasses released into the environment.
However, the states argue that even though the EPA has adopted standards and rules that embrace the carbon capture and storage technology, the technology has not been proven successful or economically feasible.
The emergency appeal also says that the carbon capture technology will require plant owners to buy more fuel, increasing the cost to run a plant, and that the startup times will be affected. The new units will have a hard time operating at low loads, they claim.
