President halts changes to ozone rule

September 23, 2011

The electric power industry breathed a sigh of relief on September 2 when President Obama made the unexpected announcement that he was putting the brakes on tougher standards for ozone. The President said that he asked the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw the planned update to the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Tougher standards, coupled with other recently approved legislation, would have created significant challenges for the industry -- in particular, leading to extensive retrofits or even closures of coal-fired power plants. With this decision, the 2008 ozone rules will remain in place while the EPA studies the issue. New ozone standards are not expected to be proposed until 2013.