The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports:
Proposed regulations for new power plants could slam a door that’s already closing fast for the reeling coal industry, industry officials and experts said Thursday.
Coal has been struggling to grow as fast as natural gas, solar and wind, and now it will be forced to innovate if it will survive, local experts said Thursday. The Environmental Protection Agency likely will require that new coal-fired plants trap and store their carbon pollution, a mandate that would virtually block construction if coal ever again becomes competitive with gas, several wire services reported.
“I doubt however that few in the gas industry are finding comfort in the EPA’s tactics against the coal industry,” said Gary E. Slagel, a former Consol advisor who now works at the energy law firm Steptoe & Johnson. “Natural gas will likely be the next in line with increased federal requirements.”
Unless the GOP are fools, they will nominate a candidate with some common sense. A Chris Christie and get that agency shut down. Otherwise extreme attacks on all practical energy is going to turn this country into another Syria. Federal troops confiscating your barbeques and lawn mowers.
The most obnoxious part of these articles is the pretentious air of neutrality they try to maintain while still using the phrase “carbon pollution” and thus feed into the Evil Big Business doesn’t want to have to clean up after itself meme.
The stupid thing is this. First they get rid of 40% of our power generation with Coal, then they go after natural gas, so we are down to what some 15% of energy from Nuke plants and hydroelectric. And nuke plants are bad so when the EPA is done we have something like 7% continuous power sources. The rest will have to come from intermittent wind and solar.
We can adjust, – send everyone home from work on cloudy days, and one work and do things during the 6 – 8 hours you can get solar energy and then have live with flashlights at night. But why would we want to do that. It will kill us and turn us into a 3rd world nation.
These guys at EPA just have no sense, other than a hate of humanity it seems.
They may kill the current industry. But they can’t get rid of all the coal already in the ground. Nature will wait them out.