Nebraska’s utilities spend millions of dollars every year to keep power plants in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local environmental regulations.

New power plants contain state-of-the-art equipment to protect the environment. Nebraska’s newest coal-fired power plant is Unit 2 of the Whelan Energy Center (WEC) located about two miles east of Hastings, Nebraska. The plant cost about $620 million to construct; of that sum, approximately $120 million was spend on equipment to protect the envisonment.  This equipment includes a flue gas desulfurization (FGD) unit, or scrubber, a baghouse, and an electrostatic precipitator. This equipment will capture nearly all of the sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx) mercury, and particulate emissions from the generator, which began operating in May 2011.

The environmental regulation of power plants—particularly by federal actions—is changing in significant ways, all of which are likely to increase the price of your electricity and the size of your monthly bill. In a series of new regulations that will be released over the next five years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking to lower power plant emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and other air pollutants. These regulations are being undertaken under the federal Clean Air Act.

These new regulatory rules could cause NPA member utilities to close some of their older power plants because the cost to bring them up to the new emissions standards would be more than the plant was worth.

The EPA is tightening these regulations as part of environmental laws passed by Congress in previous decades. Those laws required the EPA to periodically revisit the standards and make improvements based on advances in technology.

None of these planned regulations will address emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) from power plants. It is possible that regulation of those emissions may be initiated by either the U.S. Congress, the EPA, the Nebraska Unicameral, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, or cities served by NPA members. But at present, emissions of CO2 and other GHGs are not regulated.