The EPA may finalize a rule today that will essentially ban the construction of any new coal-fired power plants 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.
“This standard effectively bans new coal plants,” said Joseph Stanko, who heads government relations at the law firm Hunton and Williams and represents several utility companies. “So I don’t see how that is an ‘all of the above’ energy policy.”
Exactly. The president says he believes in “all of the above,” but the truth is that under his regime, oil drilling on federal lands is down. Leasing has slowed down. He scuttled the XL, only to approve 29% of it under political pressure. Now, the EPA is effectively banning coal-fired plants. This will make good on Barack Obama’s pre-election promise regarding how he intends to use the price of energy to force his visions on the nation:
Notice the condescending attitude in that clip. Obama failed to get cap and trade legislation passed even in a Democrat-controlled Congress. The EPA’s rule is obviously an end-around to achieve the same goal outside the legislative process.
The proposal does not cover existing plants, although utility companies have announced that they plan to shut down more than 300 boilers, representing more than 42 gigawatts of electricity generation — nearly 13 percent of the nation’s coal-fired electricity — rather than upgrade them with pollution-control technology.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said the new rule “captures the end of an era” during which coal provided most of the nation’s electricity. It currently generates about 40 percent of U.S. electricity.
Emphasis added. Cutting off one major and reliable source of energy will drive the prices of other sources up. You’ve contracted the supply side of the market. It will also cost jobs: 300 boilers have already shut down in anticipation of this rule. It will, in the short term at least, make energy less plentiful. Had this rule been in place during the Texas heatwave last summer, for instance, it would have resulted in rolling blackouts — it would have killed people at the margins. It may seem like an extreme comparison to make, but Obama’s EPA is essentially creating an energy famine in order to socially engineer the country. In the clip above, Obama spells it out plainly, that that is his goal. He is intentionally waging regulatory war on our own economy, not due to incompetence, but out of malevolence.
He’s doing this while he’s making shady post-election promises to the Russians regarding dropping our missile defenses, by the way.
And behind the Obama energy famine program: Science that looks less and less valid by the day.
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