Dive Brief:
- FERC has recommended a Kansas City coal-fired power plant be given additional time to comply with emission standards set to go into effect under the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule, Platts reports.
- While not needed for reliability, the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) said shuttering the Nearman 1 plant would cause it to fall below a 12% capacity reserve requirement during the 2016 summer peak season.
- The recommendation marks the first results of a new regulatory process, set up when MATS was finalized, that allows FERC to request timeline extensions from EPA for certain plants when it feels reliability could be threatened. The MATS rule will go into effect next year, giving all plants until the spring of 2016 to comply.
Dive Insight:
Platts reports the Kansas City BPU had requested a six-month extension to comply with MATS regulations for Nearman 1, from April 16, 2016 to October 15, 2016.
FERC regulators acknowledged that Nearman 1 is a "minor [unit] whose operation or non-operation is unlikely to cause transmission reliability or capacity reserve problems on the SPP system." However, the extension would allow air quality controls to be installed at the plant without dipping below the capacity reserve requirement.
BPU also offered to limit the operation of the Nearman 1 unit to one-third of its total annual production during this six-month period.
Platts reported that two more utilities are likely to file petitions, but that overall the number of petitions has been fewer than regulators anticipated. "I think that speaks well to the efforts at compliance that people have done," said FERC Chairwoman Cheryl LaFleur, according to Platts.
