The Environmental Protection Agency had set an April 13 deadline for itself to impose first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants. The limits were proposed a year ago by EPA. They would require any new power plant to emit no more than 1000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity produced. To put that in perspective, the average coal plant currently emits and average of 1768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, and the average natural gas plant emits 800 to 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.EPA is now sifting through more than two million comments, and has not set a new deadline.
Meanwhile, acting EPA administrator Bob Perciasepe has indicated that the agency will start working on a rule for existing power plants in fiscal year 2014.