Clay Electric is very happy to hear the “Clean Power Plan” has hit a road block.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court halted implementation of the President's Plan, which seeks to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about one-third by 2030. The divided court put implementation on hold until the pending legal challenges play out.
Under the Plan, states would have had to comply by 2022, but would have presented a plan on how to comply with the EPA by September.
Clay Electric is a pass-through, so they weren’t worried about coming in to compliance with the Plan, but did expect to feel the impact through their power supplier.
“This thing could have a very negative impact on the cost of power,” says Clay Electric’s Manager of Communications Wayne Mattox.
He says Seminole Electric- where they get their power from- was facing some big changes, like shutting a coal powered plant. Those changes would have increased the cost of power generation, according to Mattox, and that would have ultimately been passed all the way down.
“We would have had to have passed the higher power costs on to members,” Mattox says.
Mattox says there are also reliability issues- with utilities moving more to natural gas, which can’t be stored and come in through limited pipelines, he says the area would have been at risk of being in the dark if there were some kind of natural disaster that cut off supply.
The SCOTUS decision was a halt, not an outright ruling against the plan itself, however. Mattox says they’re still concerned about what will ultimately be decided.
JEA is facing more serious changes under the Plan because- unlike Clay- they generate power. Because of that, they’re still moving forward with planning and talks which were underway.
“Just because the ruling has been paused, there’s not any definitive on how that will play out,” says JEA’s Director of Environmental Programs Jay Worley.
Any infrastructure changes under the Plan, like possibly closing down a coal-fired plant, are still years out, but Worley says they need to continue planning for that possibility in case it does happen. The State was supposed to submit an implementation plan by September, and Worley says it’s unclear right now how much that timeline will move as the legal battles continue.
Regardless of what happens with the Plan, Worley says JEA plans to continue examining more environmentally friendly ways to generate energy.
“We want to make sure it’s balanced appropriately from a cost standpoint and a reliability standpoint,” he says.
Shifting more toward natural gas is a focus of the change, but renewable energy like solar is also being considered.
Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement calling the SCOTUS decision a “huge victory”. Florida is among the more than two dozen states and agencies challenging the Clean Power Plan, calling it an “unlawful overreach”.
Bondi’s believes the halt ordered by SCOTUS is a bolster for the broader challenge against the Plan itself.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the Plan on June 2nd. A final ruling could take months, and appeals are expected regardless of the decision. President Obama has vowed to push ahead in support of the Plan.
Florida Power & Light declined to comment to WOKV.
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