But just two miles from the White House stands the Capitol Power Plant, the largest single source of carbon emissions in the nation’s capital and a concrete example of the government’s inability to green its own turf.

The plant, which provides heating and cooling to the sprawling Capitol campus — 23 buildings that include the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court and Congressional office buildings, in addition to the Capitol building itself — is operated by Congress, and its transition to cleaner energy sources has been mired in national politics for years. But the failure of Congress to modernize its own facility also raises questions about the Obama administration’s ability to limit emissions from existing power plants when it has not been able to do so at a government-run facility so close to home.

The office of the architect of the Capitol, which oversees the operations of the plant, first moved to end the use of coal there in 2000 but was turned back by resistance from powerful coal-state senators who wanted to keep it as the primary fuel. The effort was revived in 2007 as a central part of the Green the Capitol Initiative, led by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time. The effort was defunded in 2011 after the Republicans took control of the House.

By then the plant had reduced the amount of coal in its fuel mix to 5 percent, down from 56 percent in 2007. But it made up the difference primarily with diesel fuel oil because, as the architect of the Capitol, Stephen T. Ayers, told a Congressional panel in 2008, converting the plant to burn natural gas exclusively would have required a modernization costing $6 million to $7 million.

At the time, the plant was spending about $2.7 million a year on fuel oil, about twice as much as it might have cost to produce the same amount of energy using natural gas. The plant remained below its capacity to burn natural gas, according to a 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, and it continues to burn diesel fuel oil, which, in addition to being much more expensive, is a significant source of emissions.

Some critics say officials at the power plant are purposely choosing to burn dirtier fuel, as a political statement.

“We worked to figure out a way to get around the issue of coal,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi. “But it is a futile effort until you get rid of the Republican majority. They do not believe in the word ‘green.’ ”

A review of public records and interviews with city and federal officials suggest that the root of the problem is a lack of enforcement by regulators and insufficient oversight from Congress.

Although the power plant is required to submit emissions reports to the District of Columbia’s Department of the Environment, which coordinates enforcement with the Environmental Protection Agency, and to apply for operation permits for new devices, records show that both agencies have failed to ensure that the power plant is in compliance.

E.P.A. officials with jurisdiction over the plant said that the agency did not have the capacity to inspect all facilities that got operating permits under the Clean Air Act, and that it relied heavily on partners like state and local energy agencies to make sure facilities were in compliance with their permits.

But district records show that the city has regularly failed to ensure that the plant is operating legally. In 2011, members of the city agency’s Air Quality Division discovered that one of the plant’s main boilers had exceeded the 10 ton-per-year limit for nitrogen oxides, which can cause severe breathing difficulties, by more than 20 tons per year since 2000.

“Emissions limits are meaningless if there is not adequate testing to ensure that they are being met,” Mike Ewall, the founder and director of the Energy Justice Network, a grass-roots organization advocating clean energy, wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to the city agency.

Donna Henry, a spokeswoman for the city environment agency, said the city had had difficulties finding records to clarify the plant’s emission history.

The chairmen and the ranking members of the House and Senate committees that oversee the power plant declined to comment, as did the office of the architect of the Capitol, often referred to as A.O.C.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/us/politics/just-across-town-a-test-of-obamas-emissions-goals.html?partner=rss&emc=rss