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emissions from power plants, but the standards don't take effect until 2014 and 2015. Experts had predicted that the rules might reduce emissions over the long term, but they didn't expect so many utilities to shift to gas so early. And they think price was the reason.
• "A lot of our units are running much more gas than they ever have in the past," said Melissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for Ohio-based American Electric Power Co. "It really is a reflection of what's happened with shale gas."
• "In the near term, all that you're going to build is a natural gas plant," she said. Still, she warned: "Natural gas has been very volatile historically. Whether shale gas has really changed that -- the jury is still out. I don't think we know yet."
• Jason Hayes, a spokesman for the American Coal Council, based in Washington, predicted cheap gas won't last.
• "Coal is going to be here for a long time. Our export markets are growing. Demand is going up around the world. Even if we decide not to use it, everybody else wants it," he said. Hayes also said the industry expects new coal-fired power plants will be built as pollution-control technology advances: "The industry will meet the challenge" of the EPA regulations.
• The boom in gas production has come about largely because of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, are injected to break shale rock apart and free the gas.
• Environmentalists say that the fluids can pollute underground drinking water supplies and that methane leaks from drilling cause serious air pollution and also contribute to global warming. The industry and many government officials say the practice is safe when done properly. But there have been cases in which faulty wells did pollute water, and there is little reliable data about the scale of methane leakage.
• "The Sierra Club has serious doubts about the net benefits of natural gas," said (Continued on page 20)
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