EPA Hearing on Carbon Pollution Standards for Existing Power Plants 

May 24, 2011 

Chicago, IL 

Testimony of Richard I Stuckey 

Good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to testify on the proposed New Source 

Pollution Standards. 

My name is Richard Stuckey and lam a member of the Sierra Club and several other 

environmental organizations but lam testifying here on behalf of myself and my family. 

I strongly commend the EPA for all its work in creating national standards for control of 

pollution. 

In particular, the proposed standards for control of carbon pollution from new power 

plants are an important step towards slowing down climate change, which is a huge threat 

to the well being of the nation and the planet. There is almost unanimous agreement 

among the climate scientists of the world (all of those that are not on the payroll of the 

carbon industry) that climate change is happening fast and that it is caused by man-made 

pollution, a large part of which comes from Carbon Dioxide emissions from existing coal 

fired power plants. 

Refore the EPA can tackle carbon emissions from existing power plants it is required to 

issue standards on proposed future power plants, so these standards are a critical step 

towards addressing a major underlying cause of climate change. But they are also 

important in their own right in setting standards that will ensure that new power stations 

are built with limits on carbon pollution so they do not add to the climate change problem. 

At present, power companies protect the health, safety or wellbeing of the people they are 

supposed to serve only when they are required to do so by regulations. They are set up to 

make the most profits possible while dumping as much of their waste products on the 

community free of charge as they are legally able to get away with. I commend the EPA for 

creating these proposed standards that will limit the extent to which the power companies 

will damage the nation and the planet in their pursuit of profits when new power sources 

are built. The standards will also go a long way towards leveling the playing field so that 

clean, renewable sources of power will be able to compete and win out over dirty sources, 

particularly coal, that have heretofore been able to pass on the cost of their pollution to the 

public and the planet. 

Renewable sources of electric energy are now available at costs which are close to or even 

lower than the cost of carbon based power, and are much lower when the full cost of 

externalities are included. 

ln an paper released in February this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of 

Sciences, Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global 
' 

Environment at Harvard Medical School, details the economic, health and environmental 

costs associated with each stage in the life cycle of coal- extraction, transportation, 

processing, and combustion. These costs, between a third to over half a trillion dollars 

annually, are directly passed on to the public. Accounting for the total harm from coal 

would add "close to 17.8 cents per kWh to the cost of electricity generated". And these 

costs do not even include the cost of climate change (Storms, tornados, hurricanes, drought, 

fires, infestations of damaging pests, etc.) 

The American Lung Association found that coal-powered electricity alone caused "over 

13,000 premature deaths in 2010, as well as almost 10,000 hospitalizations and more than 

20,000 heart attacks per year. 

So it is critical that the proposed standards for Carbon emissions from proposed power 

stations be implemented as quickly as possible to prevent the construction of new dirty 

power stations that will transfer more damaging costs of pollution to the public. 

Then, I implore you to move on quickly to create standards for pollution from existing 

power plants which must be controlled or eliminated to reduce the further damage to the 

population passed on by the power companies. 

Thank you.