Michael Bastasch
The Libertarian Republic
04 Jun 2014
In 2008, Barack Obama said his energy plan would cause electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest power plant regulations seem designed to do just that.
The EPA’s own regulatory analysis of its rule to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants says it will hike retail electricity by as much as 6.5 percent by 2020. All while forcing 19 percent of the U.S. coal-fired capacity to shutdown and decreasing coal production by up to 28 percent.
“Under the provisions of this rule, EPA projects that approximately 46 to 49 GW of additional coal-fired generation (about 19% of all coal-fired capacity and 4.6% of total generation capacity in 2020) may be removed from operation by 2020,” the EPA says in its regulatory impact analysis of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan…
…But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that EPA’s power plant rule would increase peoples’ energy costs by $17 billion per year. In total, the EPA rule would cost the U.S. economy $50 billion annually and kill 224,000 jobs per year…
The complete article is at The Libertarian Republic.
Related: Power Plants, Rate-Payers Brace for Obama Administration’s New EPA Regs
…Those mandatory reductions will be a heavy drag on the economy, according to a report issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several other groups representing energy companies.
“They are working on really the most signification EPA regulation, or any regulation, in American history. Certainly, it’s EPA’s costliest regulation,” said Matt LeTourneau, director of communications for the U.S. Chamber…
