Administration of Cross-State Air Pollution Rule Trading Program Assurance Provisions for 2025 Control Period
Key claim: Virginia power plants exceeded the state’s 2025 Cross-State Air Pollution Rule ozone-season nitrogen oxide cap, so owners of certain units must surrender extra emissions allowances.
Abstract
(Rule · Environmental Protection Agency) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is providing notice of the availability of data on the administration of the assurance provisions of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) trading program for the 2025 control period. Virginia units participating in the CSAPR NOX Ozone Season Group 2E Trading Program during the 2025 control period reported total nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions that exceeded the State’s assurance level under the program. The EPA has posted on the Agency’s website a spreadsheet that presents data demonstrating the exceedance and the Agency’s final calculations of the additional allowances that owners and operators of certain Virginia units must surrender.
Why this matters
CSAPR’s assurance provisions are the backstop that keeps the ozone-season NOx trading program from eroding state-level emission caps — when a state’s EGUs collectively exceed its budget, extra allowances must be surrendered. Virginia’s 2025 exceedance triggering surrender shows the enforcement mechanism is operating as designed on at least one state in the covered Eastern interconnection, with direct compliance costs for the specific unit owners involved.