On December 14, 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that mercury air emissions from power plants should be regulated to reduce the amount of mercury released into the air and that power plants should be required to use maximum achievable control technologies. The EPA acknowledged that sufficient information still was not available to determine how to accomplish this feat, but additional research in upcoming years would define new technologies to help control emissions. Because of this, EPA released the regulations with compliance required by December 2007.

On February 14, 2002, the Bush administration proposed the Clear Skies Initiative to reduce emissions of the three greatest pollutants from coal fired power plants; sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury. The initiative went into effect in 2005 for coal-fired power plants. On March 15, 2005, the EPA issued the Clean Air Mercury Rule, the nation’s first-ever rule to regulate mercury emission from coal-fired power plants. For mercury, the initiative called for reductions in two phases. Phase 1 would reduce the levels of mercury emissions from 1999 levels of 48 tons to 26 tons in 2010. Phase 2 would further reduce mercury emissions to 15 tons by 2018, a reduction of almost 70 percent.

The development of new technology to reduce mercury emissions from power plants is very new. It simply is not yet possible to know whether high removal efficiencies can be achieved on a commercial scale in the real world. However, we are increasing efforts to develop these new technologies and methodologies to reduce mercury emissions from man-caused sources.

• Clean Coal Technology & The President's Clean Coal Power Initiative
• Controlling Power Plant Emissions: Overview

• Clean Coal Technology & The President's Clean Coal Power Initiative
• EPA - Mercury
• Controlling Power Plant Emissions: Decision Process and Chronology