Free Republic

Jun. 19, 2014 - 5:57 - Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray on the impact of regulations on the energy industry.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and 39 fellow Republicans are attempting to use a rarely used legislative tactic to block planned Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas standards that would limit the amount of carbon new power plants can emit. The Kentucky senator filed a formal resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used provision that allows Congress to block executive branch regulations that Congress considers onerous. The EPA rules were published in the Federal Register last week. "Kentucky is facing a real crisis here," McConnell said Thursday in introducing the disapproval motion. Regulations imposed by the Obama...

Back in December, I wrote about the absurdity of the EPA claim that coal-fired power plants produced significant mercury which necessitated drastic reductions at any cost. I was then puzzled that the EPA did not produce maps of the mercury concentrations that would show the mercury was found in higher concentrations downwind of coal-fired power plants. It turns out that maps of the concentrations of mercury do exist and can be examined. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program produces annual maps of the mercury concentrations across the USA here. Note that the mercury high concentration areas changed somewhat between 2009 and...

GOP efforts to demonize the EPA’s climate change regulations haven’t found a groundswell of support in Virginia, where voters are more likely to favor the rules than oppose them, according to a new poll commissioned by POLITICO. The poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling and the Republican firm Harper Polling using automated survey methodology, found that 45 percent of likely voters support new EPA climate regulations for coal-fired power plants, an issue that has become a flashpoint in the Virginia governor’s race. Thirty-three percent of likely voters say they oppose the regulations and 22 percent aren’t sure.

FirstEnergy says it will close two coal-fired power plants in southwestern Pennsylvania as scheduled next week with no expectations that they will be sold or reopened under stricter environmental regulations. The (Washington) Observer-Reporter says company president James Lash told state House members Thursday that no potential buyers have come forward for the Mitchell Power Station in Washington County or the Hatfield’s Ferry Power Station in Greene County.

The Obama administration is effectively banning the construction of new coal-fired power plants, a move officials admit will have little to no impact on global warming. “The EPA does not anticipate that this proposed rule will result in notable CO2 emission change … by 2022,” the agency writes in its proposal to limit greenhouse gas emissions. “EPA knows there aren’t benefits,” Dan Simmons, director of regulatory and state affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “EPA and environmentalists are being disingenuous when they claim this rule will have an impact on the climate or...

Obama is using the EPA to attack the Coal industry which will make costs skyrocket for new coal-fired power plants:

The UN's climate change panel is set to release a report next month that reluctantly concludes there has been no warming of the earth in at least the last 15 years. Fewer and fewer people are believers that climate change is man made. This hasn't stopped the Obama administration from releasing new rules governing "carbon pollution" at new power plants that would mean the virtual destruction of the coal industry.

Linking global warming to public health, disease and extreme weather, the Obama administration pressed ahead Friday with tough requirements to limit carbon pollution from new power plants, despite protests from industry and Republicans that it would dim coal's future. Under the law once the Environmental Protection Agency controls carbon at new plants, it will also control carbon at existing plants — a regulation the agency said Friday it would start work on immediately to meet a June 2014 deadline. The revised standards, the company said in a statement, "essentially eliminate coal as a future generation option."

The Environmental Protection Agency’s dramatic new power plant emissions standards already have touched off a firestorm within the coal industry and on Capitol Hill, with top Republicans promising to fight tooth-and-nail against President Obama’s climate-change agenda. The EPA, the leading actor in the White House’s ambitious global-warming initiative, released the limits on Friday. Hopes that they’d be much less stringent than previous proposals proved to be misplaced. Coal-state lawmakers from both parties are promising to push back. “The president is leading a war on coal and what that really means for Kentucky families is a war on jobs. And the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming. The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It's also a key step in President Barack Obama's global warming plans, because it would help end what he called "the limitless dumping of carbon pollution" from power plants. Although the proposed rule won't immediatedly affect plants already operating, it eventually would force...

The Obama administration on Friday announced that it was not backing down from a confrontation with the coal industry and would press ahead with enacting the first federal carbon limits on the nation’s power companies. The proposed regulations, announced at the National Press Club by Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, are an aggressive move by Mr. Obama to bypass Congress on climate change with executive actions he promised in his inaugural address this year.

President Barack Obama's top energy and environmental officials said Wednesday there is a future for coal, despite a pending regulation aimed at limiting global warming pollution from new power plants that Republicans and the coal industry say will doom the fuel source. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, questioned at a House hearing, both said coal-fired power would continue. Coal makes up about 40 percent of U.S. electricity. "The rule will provide certainty for the future of new coal moving forward, and in terms of existing facilities, coal will continue to represent a significant source of energy...

For decades, coal from West Virginia’s vast deposits was mined, loaded on rail cars and hauled off without leaving behind a lasting trust fund financed by the state’s best-known commodity. Big coal’s days are waning, but now a new bonanza in the natural gas fields has state leaders working to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. West Virginia’s Senate president, Jeff Kessler, is pushing to create an oil and natural gas trust fund to support core government functions decades from now. His goal: a cushion of funds long after the gas is depleted to buoy an Appalachian mountain state chronically vexed...

<p>According to the Wall Street Journal, the Environmental Protection Agency will propose new rules next week banning the construction of new coal power plants in the United States that do not meet expensive new and ridiculous efficiency standards. The new standards will force power plants underground, literally.</p>

The “war on coal” has five new casualties. A lawsuit brought by environmental groups has forced the shutdown of five Indiana coal-fired power plants by 2018, totalling 668 megawatts of power. ... “While today’s settlement is a step in the right direction, more must be done to ensure that Hoosier families are protected from rising energy bills and the enormous health threats posed by Indiana’s reliance on coal-fired power plants,” said Jodi Perras with the Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have been targeting coal plants nationwide for retirement, which they say contribute to global...

Coal industry lobbyists and politicians have been urging the Obama administration to ease up on its regulatory agenda and craft carbon dioxide emission rules that would allow the coal industry to survive. All the while, reports indicate that hundreds of coal plants are slated to be shut down in the coming years. The unveiling of President Obama’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants earlier this summer stoked the fears of coal supporters who have already been hit hard by stricter environmental regulations. However, the industry is not going down without a fight. Coal lobbyists met with...

President Barack Obama is preparing to unveil his long-awaited national plan to combat climate change in a major speech, he announced on Saturday. … Environmental groups have been pleading with Obama to take that step, but the administration has said it’s focused first on controls on new power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency, using its authority under the Clean Air Act, has already proposed controls on new plants, but the rules have been delayed—to the chagrin of states and environmental groups threatening to sue over the delays. … “They shouldn’t wait for Congress to act, because they’ll be out of...

Tenaska Inc. has dropped plans for a 600-megawatt power plant in West Texas, marking the latest in a series of coal-fired projects abandoned because of cheap and abundant natural gas. The Omaha, Neb.-based company on Friday also announced that it no longer will pursue the development of a coal-fired power plant in Illinois, saying it will shift its attention to natural gas and renewable sources. Since Tenaska began pursuing the coal projects in 2006, several market and policy changes “have contributed to our belief that these projects are no longer viable,” said Dave Fiorelli, the company’s president of development. The...

ModMark wrote: One of the coal plants shut down in Chicago was built ~90 years ago. While upgraded in the 1950's. it still did not meet EPA standards before Obama was elected. These plants were grandfather in when the clean air act was past. These ancient relics should have been converted to natural gas long ago.Do you really want to live next to one of these ancient plants? –in response to Obama Promise Kept: Coal Plants to go Bankrupt with New EPA Carbon Cap Dear Comrade Mark, The building was built 90 years ago, but the actual power plant generating electricity is considerably...