Yesterday The Washington Examiner told its readers that GE had received an exemption from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under new clean air rules for a power plant being built in California, the Avenal Power Center project. This story (“Obama issues global warming rules in January, gives GE exemption in February”) was picked up by a number of other media outlets and political commentators, who were critical of GE for allegedly seeking and receiving the waiver.
In fact, GE received no exemption and had nothing to do with the waiver being issued. The EPA provided the waiver to the project developer. GE is not building the plant and did not advocate for the waiver.
GE’s connection to the project is that it submitted a bid for turbines. While GE would welcome the opportunity to provide our high-efficiency, advanced turbine technology for the proposed project, we have not been asked to provide any equipment to date.
By contrast, Energy and Environment News, which first reported the story and was the source for the Examiner’s own story, did not contain these errors.EEN’s original story was republished via Greenwire in The New York Times.
EPA’s Washington headquarters. Photo: Wikipedia creative commons license. The photo on the home page of GE Reports depicts the proposed Avenal Energy Plant. Image: California Energy Commission.
