Description: Challenge to EPA permit for natural gas power plant for failing to consider cleaner generation technologies.
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In re Pio Pico Energy Center LLC
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 08/02/2013 Order Download Order issued remanding in part and denying review in part. The Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) denied review of almost all of the petitioners’ challenges, including the challenges to Region 9’s elimination of combined-cycle gas turbines as a control technology in its best available control technology (BACT) analysis for greenhouse gases and to the adequacy of the BACT emission limits Region 9 selected for greenhouse gases. In rejecting petitioners’ argument that Region 9 should not have eliminated combined-cycle gas turbines in its BACT analysis, the EAB noted that Region 9 had emphasized that the purpose of the project was to support renewable power generation, that the capacity of the single-cycle turbine plant for “frequent and fast turbine startups” would do so by providing power “to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind and solar generation,” and that the longer start-up times for combined-cycle turbines were incompatible with the project’s purpose. 12/19/2012 Petition Petition filed. The Sierra Club filed an appeal with the EPA Environmental Appeals Board alleging that the agency improperly excluded cleaner generation technologies when it issued a greenhouse gas emissions permit to a California power plant. The group asked the Board to overturn the prevention of significant determination (PSD) permit issued to the plant. In particular, the Sierra Club alleged that the agency did not give adequate consideration to requiring the plant to install cleaner combined-cycle turbines rather than the less efficient single-cycle turbines. According to the plant's owner, the combined-cycle units do not power up quickly enough to provide the sort of peak power the plant is intended to generate.