Redstate...
Lisa
Jackson is Using the EPA to
Destroy the Coal Industry
Posted by Ben Howe
Thursday, August 4th
I
reported recently on EPA rules that
ran the risk of causing shut downs of plants in Texas and elsewhere. But that was before the
massive heatwave
began putting the real strain on them.
So much so that they are almost at full
capacity. And
unfortunately, the EPA is only tightening
it’s grip.
Via
Wall Street Journal:
The
agency is now tightening nearly
every eco-regulation in existence, abusing in particular traditional
air
pollutant laws to shut down coal-fired power plants. This cluster of
overlapping rules will cause far more cumulative damage than merely one
or
another rule would by itself.
A
utility, for instance, might be able
to comply with a single new rule, but under the EPA firehose it might
be forced
to retire some of its operations. Beyond the direct costs to the
utility, plant
closures would lead to job losses and higher prices for consumers and
business,
with their own knock-on effects.
Some
of the power plants, like Edison
Electric, are calling for more time to comply with these onerous
regulations so
as to help prevent any economic or energy disruptions.
In a heatwave and a down economy, you’d think
the EPA would be receptive.
Unfortunately, the source of these rules, EPA
administrator Lisa
Jackson, believes that the greater good that is being served comes
ahead of
these petty concerns.
In
fact, Jackson believes that there
is no reason to be concerned about the economics whatsoever. After all, what do the
industry leaders know
about their own industry when compared to a former chemical engineer?
WSJ:
This
cost-benefit bias may explain why
Ms. Jackson could claim at a “green jobs” conference in February that
under the
Clean Air Act, “For every $1 we have spent, we have gotten $40 of
benefits in
return. So you can say what you want about EPA’s business sense. We
know how to
get a return on our investment.”
Essentially
what Jackson is saying is
that the return on investment for the EPA, in the form of regulatory
fees, is
more important than the very industries that they are tasked with
regulating.
Worse
yet, they are risking the health
and happiness of the people that they are tasked with protecting. Temperatures in Texas are
approaching 110
degrees and industry and utility groups are requesting time to comply
with the
EPA’s MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technolog) rules which “require
coal-fired power plants to install equipment that in some cases is too
expensive to afford and in other cases does not currently exist
commercially.”
The
stated purpose of the rule is to
reduce pollution but could force the shut down of enough coal-fired
power
plants to equal about 30-70 gigawatts of electricity nationwide. For perspective, 1
gigawatt of energy powers
about 750,000 homes. Families
living in
the power grids affected will either have to find another more costly
source of
energy when economic times are tough and not everyone can afford a
solar-powered makeover (which the government is coincidentally offering
incentives for citizens to do, though those incentives pale in
comparison to
the cost) or they will have to simply live with blackouts.
The
utility industry says the standard
will lead to double digit rate hikes for consumers and require costly
upgrades
to some power plants. But
I seem to
recall that someone said that under his plans, power bills would
“necessarily
skyrocket.”
To
add insult to injury, these
regulations have been shown to be unnecessary by none other than the
EPA
itself.
Via
The Roanoke Times:
The
EPA is proposing regulations to
control numerous air pollutants that the agency’s own studies show pose
no risk
to human health; the health benefits claimed by the EPA for these
proposed
regulations are actually for pollutants that are already controlled
through
other existing regulations.
Not
to mention the fact that the coal
fired power generation is already putting forth plans to reduce their
own
emissions.
By
2015, the coal-fired power
generation industry will have invested $125 billion in coal utilization
technologies that burn coal cleaner and with more efficiency.
Power
plant emissions are already down
nearly 80 percent since 1970. A coal-fired power facility built today
is, on
average, 90 percent cleaner than the one it replaces, according to the
National
Energy Technology Laboratory. Ironically, the ability to build those
new plants
is next to impossible due to even more stringent EPA regulations.
Meanwhile,
Jackson is scoffing at the
mountain of information showing that these rules will cause blackouts,
destroy
industry, kill jobs, are unnecessary, and impede the ability for the
coal
industry to enact self regulation that they already had begun. Instead, she’s patting
herself on the back
for bringing in tons of cash at the cost of jobs and industry.
Lisa
Jackson is dutifully executing
the President’s radical environmental agenda, having explicitly stated
that he
intends to put the coal industry out of business, originally through
Cap and
Trade. His failure
to get that job
killing monstrosity passed into law has merely changed his path. The
objective
remains the same.
Read
it with links at videos at
Redstate
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