After yesterday’s Keystone Pipeline dismissal from the White House, there may now be only one type of energy source left (barely) standing that the Obama Administration hates more than oil, and that’s coal. The Obama EPA’s policies have not merely turned away from coal as an energy source, but have been willing accomplices of a radical environmentalist crusade to destroy the coal industry completely.
Look at the facts. This month the EPA is set to announce New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for power plants that defy all precedent in a naked effort to shutter coal-fired plants. In the past, NSPS standards were tailored to fit different fuel types; this one-size-fits-all approach is not only a departure from past policy but bad policy, as coal plants will be asked to meet the same standards as low-emission gas plants. The logical conclusion is that coal plants will cease to be constructed in the United States due to prohibitively expensive regulations.
In December, the EPA targeted the coal industry with its Utility MACT rule, which the North American Electrical Reliability Council (NERC) estimates could shut down as many as 300 coal plants due to the stringent standards and unreasonable implementation timeline.
Americans who work in the coal industry or simply wish to power their home (half of America’s power comes from coal) need to wake up to this EPA overreach, because it’s probably going to get worse. Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, was a “major obstacle” to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s penchant for regulations. He’s now out of the White House, which is apparently a “victory” for the EPA:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson is having a good week in White House politics, as a major obstacle to her regulatory powers resigned as President Obama’s chief of staff, and then the president held an EPA pep rally the next day assuring Jackson of his commitment to her agenda.
Bill Daley, Obama’s outgoing chief of staff, temporarily canned EPA coal emissions regulations in 2010 because of they would damage the economy. “What are the health impacts of unemployment?” he said while arguing against the Utility MACT rule.
Jackson considered resigning when Daley’s job concerns trumped (temporarily) her environmental regulations. A former EPA administrator, Carol Browner, had already resigned as a White House environmental policy adviser before Daley eliminated her position.
If what we’ve seen so far has been regulatory restraint from the EPA, we should be terrified to see what the White House post-Daley, who at least had an inkling of the economic impacts of these rules, will come up with. The Obama Administration is pursuing a war on energy that is destined to put more Americans out of work and threaten our power grid. He doesn’t like oil production here. He doesn’t like coal production here. How does he expect an economic recovery if we can’t even power it?
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