American Electric Power recently announced that proposed EPA regulations would force the shutdown of five coal-fueled power plants and the reduction of power generation at six other power plants, further harming electricity reliability. This would go along with a net loss of 600 power plant jobs with annual wages totaling approximately $40 million. Yet, in an editorial last week, the New York Times argued that this evidence showing how proposed EPA regulations would harm our economic and energy security was “cynical.”
ACCCE President and CEO, Steve Miller, responded with a letter to the editor of the New York Times yesterday, noting that no one should be dismissive of such evidence:
[C]alling American Electric Power cynical was dismissive of the 600 A.E.P. workers who stand to lose their jobs years ahead of schedule because of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations. While a few more years on the job may not seem like much to you, I am sure that the 600 workers and their families feel differently.
Miller also points out that future legislation and regulations coming from Washington should emphasize, not weaken, coal’s role in a balanced energy portfolio:
There is a reason coal generates nearly half of our nation’s electricity: because it’s affordable, abundant, reliable and increasingly clean. We need energy policies that take advantage of coal’s importance to the United States, not diminish it.
Click here to see the initial findings from the National Economic Research Associates on negative effects these proposed EPA regulations on power plants would have on jobs and energy prices.
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is committed to the idea that America can have the affordable, reliable electricity we need, with the clean environment we want. ACCCE’s Behind the Plug blog is the place for up-to-date news and analysis on clean coal technology developments and energy policy progress.
I expected this type of idiocy from the radical big government types now controlling Washington, D.C.. Rather than apply the standards which were in place and comply with the plans for continueing improvements on behalf of the private ownership of our electric plants, the “big government” radicals choose to accelerate a plan to meet “their” agenda with no consideration to the industry and the consumers of electricity.
This is what happens when a nation selects a group of government employees (president, cabinet and staff) inhabitated by individuals with zero private industry experience, excessive liberal standards and no individuals with any understanding of Econ 101.
If the coal industry would realize it needs to expand into alternative energies and stop killing people, they wouldn’t be losing jobs. I am glad the EPA is raising its regulations. Coal companies need to be made accountable for the destructing they are causing. Profit over people is not the answer.
Aimee —
Apparently your particular ideology is more important to you than the lives of the workers. So, for you it is not “profits over people” or “electricity over darkness” but it is instead “Ideology over people”. When you get older you will start to understand the importance of people in this equation.
The greatest threat to American liberty, prosperity, and national security today are actions being undertaken by unelected bureaucrats at the US EPA.
EPA’s attack on America’s energy industry will deliberately limit American industry, obstruct American commerce, force manufacturing jobs out of our nation, condemn Americans to a lower standard of living forever, intrude into every aspect of citizen’s lives, and ultimately replace America with China as the greatest world economic and military power.
EPA is attacking America’s energy industry at every level, denying permits to drillers and coal operators, and revoking existing permits. EPA continually creates new rules to shut down existing facilities that comply with the old rules. More than half of the nation’s refineries have been shut down since 1970.
Several of EPA’s proposed carbon regulations target coal, America’s greatest fuel resource. America is to coal as Saudi Arabia is to oil.
EPA’s current Mercury ruling will force the closure of ~¼ of America’s electrical power generation capacity. Replacing this capacity will cost electricity customers billions, but will result in no noticeable global reduction in Mercury, because American power plants are such a tiny contributor.
Natural sources such as volcanoes are responsible for about half of an estimated global atmospheric Mercury emissions annually. United States power plants emit less than half of one percent of the total. Cremation of human remains contributes half as much Mercury as all coal fired power plants in the United States.
EPA continues to attack the Energy industry under the rubric of limiting CO2 emissions.
Water vapor is by far the most important ‘greenhouse gas.’ The sun evaporates over a trillion tons of water every day, dwarfing all man-made emissions of so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ such as CO2, and making any human action to alter atmospheric ‘greenhouse gas’ levels trivial and frivolous.
EPA can neither change the temperature of Earth by a tenth of a degree nor effectively reduce global atmospheric Mercury, but crippling the United States’ economy and curtailing American Liberty is within EPA’s reach.
• Limiting coal use will raise the cost of everything made here in the US, because coal-generated electricity is an input into every good and service. Electricity rates will increase sharply.
• Reducing coal use will drive jobs out of America. No workplace can be competitive with rolling blackouts. Expensive new power plants will raise the cost of producing goods and services in the USA, making our products less attractive domestically and globally.
• For every ton of coal the US does not burn as a result of these regulations, more than a ton of coal will be burned somewhere else. The product no longer made in the United States will now be made with greater pollution in nations with far more lax regulations regarding all kinds of pollution. The US is the most energy-efficient economy in the world.
• Limiting coal use will lower the standard of living of everyone in the United States FOREVER. Building new generating plants that burn more costly fuels means less wealth remains available for other things, such as expanding our capital base. United States GDP is estimated to be reduced by TRILLIONS over the next generation.
• CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is essential to life on earth. If Government could regulate all the CO2 out of the atmosphere, every green plant would die, followed by all animals that eat green plants.
• If EPA can regulate my CO2 emissions then EPA has unlimited power to regulate every aspect of my life beginning with every breath I take, including what I may and may not eat. One pound of hamburger represents the CO2 equivalent of driving an average car about 160 miles.
• Conversion of tons of coal to barrels of liquid fuels suitable for motor vehicle use is feasible at current oil prices, and is the only fuel available that could conceivably be produced on a scale sufficient to help America lessen or actually eliminate our dependence on nations whose dictators openly espouse our destruction. Of course that too will be forestalled by EPA’s attack.
These attacks on America’s energy industry could have been conceived with the express goal of ending the American Dream. Our children will live worse and harder lives than we have. Millions who could have raised themselves from poverty through their motivation and dedicated work will now be frustrated.
No enemy of America has ever carried out a plan that has a greater threat for the future of America and greater threat to the cause of human liberty worldwide.
America must turn her back on the false prophets who demand we sacrifice our economy to their false god of ‘the environment’ (as shamans once sacrificed virgins to volcanoes) so future generations can be blessed by the high standard of living and the freedom that arise from ready availability of fuel at market prices.
Would that EPA and the Obama Administration had the wisdom of King Canute, who recognized that he was mortal, and only God has the power to alter the flow of the tides – and determine Earth’s climate.