Posts Tagged by Coal Power

Remember when Obama was running for president in 2008? He said a lot of things that people didn’t seem to pay much attention to. One of those things he said that people seemed to choose to ignore was that implementing his plan regarding coal, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Well, it turns out he was quite serious about that. You can hear him talk about it in the video below.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations under the Obama Administration are handcuffing every form of energy production in the United States. Now, new EPA regulations that are due to go into effect will shut down 8% of US power generation. This will put more people out of work and force electricity rates to ‘necessarily skyrocket’.

After two and a half years the Team Obama continues to target the American people with a radical job-killing agenda. The latest move by the EPA will push new rules on 26 states. The new regulations will kill thousands of jobs, cost billions of dollars and increase electricity rates for every family.

New EPA rules will force Western coal-fired power plants to install haze-reducing pollution-control equipment at a cost of $1.6 billion a year. Pictured is the Dave Johnston Power Plant in Glenrock, Wyoming.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Obama has the power to delay new rules that will shut down 8% of all U.S. power generation.

Since everyone has a suggestion or three about what President Obama can do to get the economy cooking again, here’s one of ours: Immediately suspend the Environmental Protection Agency’s bid to reorganize the U.S. electricity industry, and impose a moratorium on EPA rules at least until hiring and investment rebound for an extended period.

The EPA is currently pushing an unprecedented rewrite of air-pollution rules in an attempt to shut down a large portion of the coal-fired power fleet. Though these regulations are among the most expensive in the agency’s history, none were demanded by the late Pelosi Congress. They’re all the result of purely bureaucratic discretion under the Clean Air Act, last revised in 1990.

As it happens, those 1990 amendments contain an overlooked proviso that would let Mr. Obama overrule EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s agenda. With an executive order, he could exempt all power plants “from compliance with any standard or limitation” for two years, or even longer using rolling two-year periods. All he has to declare is “that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so.”

Both criteria are easily met. Most important, the EPA’s regulatory cascade is a clear and present danger to the reliability and stability of the U.S. power system and grid. The spree affects plants that provide 40% of U.S. baseload capacity in the U.S., and almost half of U.S. net generation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the power supply, reported this month in a letter to the Senate that 81 gigawatts of generating capacity is “very likely” or “likely” to be subtracted by 2018 amid coal plant retirements and downgrades.

That’s about 8% of all U.S. generating capacity. Merely losing 56 gigawatts—a midrange scenario in line with FERC and industry estimates—is the equivalent of wiping out all power generation for Florida and Mississippi.

Listen to President Barack Obama in the video below describing how electricity costs will ‘necessarily skyrocket’ under his plan. As you can see that is what is happening through the use of EPA regulations.