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Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed legislation in April that would require sharp reductions in air pollution at six old power plants and reduce nitrogen pollution to the Chesapeake.
The law requires plants to install technologies to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides and mercury. It also calls for Maryland to join a regional pact to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2019.
Environmentalists, who had sought the legislation for two years, called it the strongest power plant emissions legislation in the country.
Ehrlich, who originally had said the Health Air Act was unnecessary, signed the bill after the General Assembly approved it with veto-proof majorities.
The governor last year recommended a policy change that would accomplish some of the cleanups without a new law. His version did not call for a cut in carbon dioxide emissions, which contributes to global warming.
“The issue is the carbon,” Ehrlich said in brief remarks to explain why he was signing the measure. He said the technology to reduce carbon dioxide “does not currently exist, but we believe it will” by 2019.
The new air pollution law allows Maryland to back out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative starting in 2009 if power companies show that cleanups would threaten electricity supply.
Nitrogen emission reductions from the affected plants would be reduced by about 70 percent, resulting in close to a 1 million pound reduction in nitrogen deposition to the Bay and its rivers. Mercury emissions would be cut by 90 percent, and sulfur dioxide emissions by 85 percent.
“This legislation will save lives and protect the environment from some of the worst polluters in the state,” said Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George’s, lead sponsor of the bill in the senate.
It will affect coal-fired power plants in metropolitan Baltimore and the District of Columbia, which power suppliers had warned may drive up prices just as rate caps are to expire across Maryland.
Constellation Energy officials said they might have to close its C.P. Crane coal-fired power plant in Baltimore County by 2013 because new air pollution control requirements would require too large of an investment. The C.P. Crane coal-fired power plant employs 110 people.
Constellation will make a decision after completing a study in about two months. But “it’s very likely” that the company will seek to close the Crane plant, said Constellation Vice President John Long.
“When you burden plants like Crane … you could approach a situation where it’s more economic to shut the plant down than to install those controls,” Long said. “We now in Maryland have the most restrictive air environmental standards in the world.”
David Schoengold, a power industry analyst hired by advocates for the Healthy Air Act, predicted that none of the six coal-fired power plants facing new pollution limits under the state law will close.
Before any power plant in Maryland is shut down, the owners have to notify the Maryland Public Service Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the consortium that runs the regional power grid, said PSC spokeswoman Christine Nizer. Such a notification has not happened, she said.
These entities would examine whether electric reliability in the region would be hurt, and the federal agency or the grid consortium could intervene and prevent a closure.
