What's this about CO2, sulfur dioxide and mercury? Coal is clean and beautiful.
Beautiful, indestructible coal begat the industrial revolution and kept millions of people of all ages gainfully employed in the mines and powered the USA for decades. Burning it pumped out tons of CO2, feeding plant and crop growth and warming the planet, saving countless people from freezing to death.
That’s pretty much how they think in the White House and at the EPA these days. So they are planning to roll back the Obama era Clean Power Plan that was going to seriously cut CO2 emissions by a plant-killing 19 percent to only 1.5 percent. Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxide and Mercury reductions are cut back too.
The industry is ecstatic; they will save about $400 million per year in compliance costs to meet the Clean Power standard. According to the Washington Post,
Jim Matheson, chief executive of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said in a statement Saturday that it appears the measure will “provide electric co-ops the certainty and flexibility they need to meet their consumer-members’ energy needs. The Clean Power Plan would have resulted in stranded assets and stranded debt, significantly increasing electricity costs for many consumers,” added Matheson, whose association’s members get 41 percent of their energy from coal-fired generation.
I mean, what’s a little mercury, acid rain and nitrogen oxide-caused smog if consumers can have cheap electricity?
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