Calculating the Environmental Costs and Benefits of Resources

One of the Council’s important tasks in revising its regional power plan is to develop a methodology to determine the environmental costs and benefits of resources. At its December meeting, the Council agreed on a methodology that it will use in developing its Seventh Power Plan.

The Council will quantify the cost of complying with existing environmental regulations for new resources, including the Environmental Protection Agency's 111(b) proposal. The EPA recently announced that it is delaying adoption of this regulation until summer 2015. Its state-based program for existing sources, 111(d), is also expected to be finalized by mid-summer.

As for how to deal with unregulated (residual) environmental effects and potential future regulatory costs, the Council will examine their effects through scenario analyses to evaluate the cost and risk to the power system.

Finally, in the specific case of health benefits from reduced wood smoke from improved energy efficiency, the Council decided against trying to quantify those benefits. The issue was examined recently in a Regional Technical Forum report on lowered wood smoke from efficiency measures. Instead, the Council will note the associated health benefits it its description of measures to increase public awareness.