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Obama administration regulations could force power plants that make 40 percent of the nation’s electricity to shut down.
At issue are EPA restrictions on emissions that would close hundreds of coal-burning power plants which represent around 40 percent of the nation’s electricity.
If that wasn’t bad enough, some observers think the regulations could double electricity rates for average households. The rates would increase because utilities would have to pass the cost onto ratepayers of replacing coal burning power plants or modernizing them to comply with the regulations.
The EPA rules — Carbon Pollution Standards for New Power Plants — are part of Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which the agency says contribute to global warming.
Obama Admitted Plan Would Raise Electricity Rates
There is some evidence that President Obama has a deliberate strategy of increasing electricity rates and destroying the coal industry.
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama told the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. “Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama said, “because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Harness the power of the sun when the power goes out…
Obama’s prediction about coal plants have been proven true. As Off The Grid News previously reported, in October 2013, FirstEnergy Corp announced that it would shut down two coal-fired powered plants in Pennsylvania because it said the cost of complying with EPA regulations was too high.
Reuters estimated that coal-burning power plants capable of generating 15,000 megawatts of electricity have shut down since Obama took office in 2009. The news service also estimates that power plants that generate around 37,000 megawatts of power will close in the next 10 years. One megawatt can provide electricity to up to about 1,000 homes.
Awfully Expensive Electricity
Those plants will be closing at a time when demand for electricity is increasing. That will force utilities to build power plants that burn other fuels such as natural gas. It will add additional cost to electricity rates at a time when the rates are already going up dramatically.
“It could get awfully expensive,” Daniel Simmons of the Institute for Energy Research told World Net Daily. “Some people might see their electricity rates double. If there’s no backup power plants, that means electricity is going to get awfully expensive when you have shortages around the country.
Another Obama Plan To Raise Your Electric Bill
“We’re talking about dramatically increasing the cost of electricity all to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I think that is the real goal,” Simmons said.
Another Obama administration plan to reduce greenhouse emissions, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, or CSS technology, could raise electricity costs even more, Simmons predicted. He noted that a an experimental CSS power plant in the United States will cost an estimated $4.3 billion to build and the EPA doesn’t know if the technology would work.
“The technology is awfully expensive because it hasn’t been tried anywhere, and that’s to try to capture the carbon dioxide as it comes out after they burn the coal.” Simmons said of CSS.
CSS involves the use of filters to divert carbon emissions from the air – and every taxpaying American will pay. The CSS plants under construction will require $300 million in taxpayer subsidies.
US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been critical of the Obama administration’s policy on coal.
“This Administration is trying to hold the coal industry to impossible standards,” Manchin said. “Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible. Forcing coal to meet nearly the same emissions standards as gas when experts know that the required technology is not operational on a commercial scale makes absolutely no sense and will have devastating impacts to the coal industry and our economy.”
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