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John Ransom reported at Townhall Finance today that due to new interpretations of current rules, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be forcing about 20 percent of the coal-generated electric plants in the United States to shut down.
The article reports:
In addition to the loss of generating capacity, the Commerce Department estimates that the new rules could kill up to 60,000 jobs, says Heritage, while an industry trade group says that the rules will cost $129 billion, according to the Washington Post.
During the 2008 presidential campaign then-Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden both claimed that if elected they would institute policies that make it cost prohibitive for coal-fired plants to operate in the United States.
Looks like this is one promise they’ll keep.
I live in an all-electric house. This is not good news.
The article further points out:
The administration is using new interpretations of long-ago passed emission standards- standards that no administration has tried to enforce- along with vague, esoteric “visibility” standards to target older, coal-fired plants. Critics say that the EPA fails to make a case that the plants present a danger to public health or visibility, as the EPA seemed to admit when they issued a stay against adoption of the rules earlier this year.
“The stringency and cost of the new regulations provoked an outpouring of protest and some 5,800 comments” writes Heritage, “citing technical and statutory errors. Some 21 governors and more than 100 Members of Congress also raised objections. Ultimately, EPA officials were forced to acknowledge their failure to ‘calculate standards that fully reflected operational reality.’”
But as Obama tries to shore up his base of support amid blistering criticism from progressive groups, look for Obama to continue to use backdoor regulatory means to enforce, ignore or otherwise interpret laws to benefit special interests that support the president’s agenda.
I don’t know if Congress will be able to do anything to stop the runaway train that is the Obama Administration’s regulation glut, but I suspect some Congressmen from states that produce coal or have coal-fired electric plants might at least put up a fight. As usual, when there is an election coming, the American consumer gets the shaft. Hopefully, voters will be smart enough to remove this administration from office before they further harm the country.
