I’ll say again, I’m no fan of coal. But, until real clean energy can be dependable, affordable, and reliable, we need coal and especially natural gas (and to build nuclear)
EPA to propose rolling back climate rule for power plants Wednesday
The Trump administration will move Wednesday to repeal federal limits on power plant climate pollution, attacking the Biden era’s most ambitious attempt to use regulations to rein in heat-trapping gases from the electric grid, according to six people familiar with the situation.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will announce the repeal of the power plant carbon dioxide rule along with a separate regulation to curb hazardous air pollution such as mercury during an event at agency headquarters, the people said.
The two repeal proposals are the most important EPA regulatory actions of President Donald Trump’s second term to date. Without offering details, EPA said Tuesday that Zeldin will make a “major policy announcement” at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Scrapping the Biden-era power plant rule would effectively shelve regulations for the nation’s second-biggest producer of climate pollution — the electricity sector — which accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.
The move will come one day after the executive director of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, Jarrod Agen, defended the administration’s focus on coal and natural gas for maintaining the reliability of the electric grid. Speaking at POLITICO’s annual Energy Summit on Tuesday, Agen said Trump is not considering renewable sources such as solar power for the nation’s energy mix, despite those technologies’ support from some GOP lawmakers as well as business leaders such as Elon Musk.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of rolling back mercury rules, but, some say the current regulations are overly strict. Further, really, all of this should have been done by legislation to start with, not regulations. But, Congress likes to abdicate its responsibility on everything to federal agencies.
The rules should be finalized by the end of the year.
Cold starting a coal plant to 70% power usually takes 10 to 20 hours
Rushing it will cause thermal shock to the boilers the average age of a coal plant in USA is now 45years
They retire when they are no longer profitable.
No new plants have been built since 2018 it took 5 years
Old King Coal is back, baby!!
Soot, acid rain, mercury, particulates, smog, ash, runoff, fish kills, methane release, black lung, COPD, asthma, CO2…
Fortunately, the closest coal-burning plant to Mar-a-lago is in Tampa, 200 miles NW, as the crow dies.
Mr trump is deconstructing the onerous administrative state, tearing down the regulations, rules and restrictions that hamper American development. EPA, FDA, USDA, CDC, NASA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, FAA, NHTSA… America is back!!!
Facts is facts! To enable wealthy white men to lead their best lives, they need unlimited access to convenient power. If this fact means some Americans have to be slightly inconvenienced, so be it.
Oue errant ecologist wrote:
The distinguished Mr Dowd seems to believe that sparktricity generation exists solely to benefit wealthy white men. Oddly enough, even in eastern Kentucky, an area of mostly poor, though very heavily white, people, we have electric service. Why, would he even believe that I don’t have to have the dogs running a generator wheel to power my computer and internet? Shocking, I know!
Electricity is virtually universally available all across the fruited plain. And the very conservative, very red state southeast, is the only region of the United States in which the majority of homes use electricity as their heating fuel. That’s a function of a significant rural population, where natural gas lines don’t extend, and our relatively milder winters, in which older technology heat pumps can keep up.
The humorous part is that, were we to abandon fossil fuel powered electricity generation, it would be mostly the “wealthy white men” and their aristocratic families who would have reliable electricity, because only they could afford the facilities to generate their own power, because solar and wind power simply cannot keep up with the demand for electricity across the country.
Even the honorable Mr Dana surely realizes that the environmental costs of our electricity generation falls largely on the familiies of the non-wealthy, often non-white Americans.
We appreciate his point that rural electrification has been a resounding success, likely an anti-free market government program Mr Dana supports.
West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and parts of Pennsylvania, have been impoverished by the turn away from coal. The United States have the world’s fourth largest proven coal reserves, and it would be foolish to leave that wealth unused, in the ground.
That is certainly one opinion!
Mr forty-seven agrees!
EO