The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new rule to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants, which would effectively ban new coal power plants, as its emissions standards are too low to be met by conventional coal-fired facilities.
This stands in stark contrast with the President’s supposed “all of the above energy approach” and sends a strong signal that coal is not part of the President’s energy vision for America. In combination with other EPA regulations that contribute to the premature shutdown of existing coal plants, the EPA’s actions represent one of the greatest threats to the electric sector and America’s energy supply.
The new rule requires power plants to meet an output-based standard of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. Other than natural gas-fired power plants built in recent years, most power plants, and especially coal-fired ones, would fail to meet that standard.
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