Joe Biden told a young lady on a rope line that he was opposed to coal fired electric generators. Barack Obama said that his energy plans would necessarily cause utility costs to skyrocket and that he would bankrupt coal generating facilities. Well, here comes the guillotine.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move could end the construction of conventional coal-fired facilities in the United States.
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Industry officials and environmentalists said in interviews that the rule, which comes on the heels of tough new requirements that the Obama administration imposed on mercury emissions and cross-state pollution from utilities within the past year, dooms any proposal to build a coal-fired plant that does not have costly carbon controls. [Washington Post]
If coal were oil Kentucky would be the Saudi Arabia of the world.
Sorry Mr. President, none of us want to live in a dangerously polluted world, but no president should try to bankrupt the coal industry, drive up electricity costs for American citizens or impose crushing regulations in furtherance of those stated goals.
This EPA agency with a $10 billion budget and 17,000 agents has become a regulatory tyranny for millions of law-abiding Americans. Congress must defund the EPA !
Posted by: Big Eddie | March 27, 2012 at 02:02 PM