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The Biden administration is reportedly finalizing a proposal that would force fossil fuel-fired power plants to substantially curb emissions or utilize costly carbon capture technology.The proposal — which will soon be released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — is expected to require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to cut or capture the vast majority of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2040, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing officials briefed on a draft of the plan. The regulation, if finalized, would represent the first-ever federal action curbing power plant emissions."EPA cannot comment because the proposals are currently...

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt ended the agency’s “sue and settle” policy Monday, criticizing “regulation through litigation” as wrong and “abusive.” “The days of regulation through litigation are over,” said Administrator Pruitt. “We will no longer go behind closed doors and use consent decrees and settlement agreements to resolve lawsuits filed against the Agency by special interest groups where doing so would circumvent the regulatory process set forth by Congress. Additionally, gone are the days of routinely paying tens of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees to these groups with which we swiftly settle.” Under previous administrations, particularly...

This is an excellent example of why it is important to have the presidency in sane hands: (EPA chief: Trump to undo Obama plan to curb global warming) President Donald Trump in the coming days will sign a new executive order that unravels his predecessor’s sweeping plan to curb global warming, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday. EPA chief Scott Pruitt said the executive order to be signed Tuesday will undo the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, an environmental regulation that restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. The 2015 rule has been on hold since...

On Tuesday, President Trump will announce new executive orders that target EPA regulations that hindered electricity production in the United States. The regulations were created by the Obama administration as part of an anti-fossil fuel strategy to combat global warming. With the installation of a new EPA chief, Scott Priutt - a confirmed global warming skeptic - the electricity production sector of the economy is about to receive a much needed shot in the arm. Pruitt says that the White House plan is both "pro-jobs and pro-environment" and, unlike the Obama plan, will not be "tethered" to the Paris Climate...

American truckers, and the big rigs they drive, are literally the lifeblood of this nation, transporting food, raw materials and finished goods from one end of the country to the other and back again, delivering what is needed where it is needed when it is needed on a daily basis. But those truckers just had a major roadblock placed in their way, courtesy of President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, and the consequences for not only the trucking industry, but America as a whole, could be devastating. According to The Daily Caller, the EPA just announced on Tuesday that it...

For more than 100 years, coal-fired boilers at the Municipal Power Plant have helped power the city's electric needs. At 5:30 p.m. Sept. 22, the last day of summer, the Municipal Power Plant burned its last load of coal. The city-owned plant's two coal-fired boilers join a growing number of small, aging coal-fired units across the country that have gone cold in the face of tighter environmental regulations on emissions. A third boiler will continue to burn natural gas. To meet both regulations, Johanningmeier said, the plant would have had to refit the boilers with emissions-reducing equipment costing tens of...

Because you are buying now two appliances, a water heater and air conditioner, “heat pump heaters are twice as expensive” as the old electric water heater If you ask an engineer, he will tell you that CO2 is not a pollutant, and burning fossil fuels has made the Earth greener because their emissions are rapidly assimilated by sunlight. As Dr. Klaus Kaiser had explained, “incomplete combustion can cause air quality problems, not because of CO2 but due to soot particles and nitrogen oxides,” particularly in high density urban areas where the air tends to be stagnant. There is a reason...

Remember the EPA bureaucrat who got caught receiving $900,000 in pay without working because he claimed he also was employed by the CIA? According to a report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the man, former climate policy expert John Beale, “retired” when questions arose about his spotty attendance and expense records. Only he didn’t file his retirement paperwork and continued to draw an active-duty salary for some time after. His boss at the time in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, now-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, knew this for about seven months and did nothing to stop...

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

It’s critically important to have high-quality cost-benefit assessments for proposed regulations, especially at the Environmental Protection Agency, which issues some of the federal government’s most expensive rules. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that the EPA has employed some suspicious math in assessing several recent regulations aimed at improving air and water quality. For example, the EPA claims it examined the potential effects on employment as it drafted regulations for industrial boilers, commercial incinerators, and waste-water dischargers — but, the GAO found, the EPA was reaching these estimates by using 20-year-old labor-market research that examined only...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) forthcoming climate change regulations for new and existing electricity generating units have been appropriately labeled the “war on coal,”[1] because the proposed limits for carbon dioxide emissions would essentially prohibit the construction of new coal-fired power plants and force existing ones into early retirement. However, the casualties will extend well beyond the coal industry, hurting families and businesses and taking a significant toll on American manufacturing across the nation. Congress should stop the EPA and all other federal agencies from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Driving Energy Prices Up, Economic Activity Down...

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA. More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA’s greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.The rush is a major sign of...

On Monday evening Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican Presidential candidate, spoke with Iowa farmers during a telephone town hall event hosted by the Iowa Soybean Association. In an effort to focus national attention on the critical topic of agricultural policy and trade impacting farmers across America, the ISA board of directors has invited all major Presidential candidates to participate in a telephone town hall meeting. During his opening remarks Perry said the country is in trouble and he is concerned about the future and that his candidacy is about fighting the fight for the next generation. "I'm not interested...

Mitt Romney faces an inconvenient truth on climate change. While the former Massachusetts governor often touts his decision not to sign up for a regional cap-and-trade compact, he also glosses over a six-year-old set of carbon dioxide rules that his aides touted at the time as the first in the country for electric utilities. Under Romney’s regulations, finalized in September 2006, Massachusetts’s six largest power plants faced mandatory CO2 limits with several market-friendly compliance options designed to help keep the costs down. Democrats and environmentalists panned Romney’s rules as weak tea. Many felt burned by the governor’s decision not to...

Environmental regulators walked gingerly along the San Leandro shoreline Friday, keeping a sharp eye out for the elusive wildlife killer known as the "nurdle." "I've got one," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after scooping one out of a worker's net. There, in his palm, was a tiny white pellet. Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic that are melted down and used in the production of plastic bags, bubble wrap, packaging and wrapping material. They may sound cuddly and nonthreatening, but they are believed to be responsible for the sickness and death of thousands...

So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them… – Barack Obama speaking to San Francisco Chronicle, January 2008 The United States has the world’s largest coal resources. In fact we have 50 percent more coal than Russia, the country with the next largest reserves. But coal use in the United States is under assault. Before becoming President, Barak Obama promised to bankrupt coal companies. As President, he has tried various strategies to force Americans to use less coal. After failing to pass a national energy tax (cap-and-trade), the President vowed...

Republicans have regularly called rigorous environmental protection laws anti-business and anti-growth, and they appear to be taking advantage of their greater numbers in the House of Representatives to try to roll them back, mostly by defunding them. House GOP members have loaded up an appropriations bill with at least 39 different legislative riders that seek to minimize the powers of the National Parks Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental Protection Agency, The New York Times reports. According to House Democrats, the anti-environment legislative riders include: One that would prevent the Bureau of Land Management from designating new...

Yesterday, the EPA announced its new regulations on Auto Emissions raising the new MPG standards that were established less than a year ago. Their regulatory authority is based on their declaration under the clean air act, that CO2 is a pollutant. According to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson the new auto regulations are just the start. Just as the health care bill regulates the way you make personal choices about your body, the EPA will be adding energy consumption taxes to regulate what were once personal and corporate choices about the way energy is consumed. It doesn't matter whether...

Monday afternoon the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and said it will begin to draft and enforce regulations. Even the EPA realizes these moves will be a disaster for the US economy (and to our own selves as one of those gases, CO2, is what humans ad to the atmosphere every time they exhale). Rasmussen asked American "likely voters" what they thought about the EPA announcement and reaction was split 41% to 41%. But the EPA can write and enforce their regulations without the consent of Congress. When...

Inconvenient Truths About Oil USA Tom Glennon -  May 24, 2008   http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/t_glennon/2008/05242008.htm Before my recent retirement after a career of almost 40 years, I had the unique opportunity to work in the technology areas for a major oil company, an international financial operation, and one of the world’s largest international banks. As a result, although not an expert in either exploration or production of crude oil and its impact on financial and consumer markets, I did have access to information that most American consumers did not. This was not secret data, nor was it proprietary information. It was...