Posted on 03/16/2011 4:09:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Environmental regulators proposed rules on Wednesday that would force aging coal-fired power plants to choose between installing costly anti-pollution technology or shutting, which could ensure reliance nuclear power and natural gas.
The Environmental Protection Agency said the proposed rules, once fully implemented, will prevent 91 percent of mercury in coal from being released into the air. Power plants would have four years to meet the standards.
The EPA will take public comment for 60 days on the rules, which would require many coal-fired power plants to install scrubbers and other technologies to reduce emissions of arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases in addition to mercury, which can damage nervous systems in babies.
"Generally anything that makes coal plants more expensive is a benefit to alternative forms of generation whether they be natural gas, nuclear, or hydropower," said Paul Patterson, an analyst at Glenrock and Associates LLC in New York.
What the final rules will look like after public comment is uncertain, he added.
Coal-fired plants generate nearly 50 percent of U.S. electricity while nuclear and natural gas generate about 20 percent each.
Issuance of the rules, 20 years in the making, came in response to a court deadline.
"With the help of existing technologies we will be able to take reasonable steps that will provide dramatic protections to our children and loved ones, preventing premature deaths, heart attacks and asthma attacks," said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator.
She said the rules could prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks each year.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Just add an FGD scrubber and an SCR, beef up your existing air pollution control equipment and throw in some new coal crushing technology and a couple 400 foot stacks and a few water clarifiers($500 million to +1 billion per plant)and you and good to go.
Just doing what he promised he would do - here he is, candidate obama, laying it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V22BN4-845A
Pull the trigger, boys.
Heard there were provisions in the healthcare bill preventing these despicable agencies from being defunded, any truth to this?
Interesting this “journalists” left out the estimated $10 billion per year price tag. It will cost more than all the coal used in the US.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2689780/posts
the epa MUST GO
I thought Congress had passed a law saying that EPA could no longer control CO2 or Greenhouse gasses.
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