According to Midwest Energy News, Perciasepe said the agency would collaborate with states to curb greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort that would start in 2014.

The White House and the EPA normally shy away from talking about the greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.

On the call to discuss the EPA’s budget proposal, Perciasepe said the agency continued to review comments on its proposed source performance standard for future power plants.

The agency has a statutory deadline of this Saturday to finalise that rule but is yet to send it to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

Subsequent to Perciasepe’s comments being published, the EPA reportedly emailed out a statement backing away from them.

“To clarify, EPA currently has no plans to regulate GHG emissions from existing power plants,” the Midwest Energy News quotes the EPA as saying.

“As the acting administrator said today, a variety of potential options are on the table but the agency is currently focused on reviewing the more than 2 million comments received on its proposed standards for new power plants.

“To assert any decision on any additional action has been made would be incorrect.”

However, given the rhetoric coming out of Washington it seems only a matter of time before authorities turn their GHG seeking eyes on existing power plants.

The rule for future power plants would apparently limit all facilities to 1000 pounds per megawatt-hour of carbon dioxide, which is a level easily achievable by natural gas technology.

According to the Midwest Energy News coal plants would have to turn to carbon capture and storage to meet that cap.

Unfortunately, CCS is still not commercially viable.