EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced on Thursday a plan to reduce smokestack pollution causing smog and soot in downwind states — where it combines with local air contaminants, making it impossible for those states to meet air quality standards on their own...
While the EPA says the suite of regulations will not cause the power to go out, almost everyone agrees that it will help close down some of the oldest, and dirtiest, coal-fired facilities. At the remaining plants, operators would have to use existing pollution controls more frequently, use lower-sulfur coal, or install additional equipment.
"The EPA is ignoring the cumulative economic damage new regulations will cause," said Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a pro-coal industry association. Along with other pending regulations, Miller said they "are among the most expensive ever imposed by the agency."
The regulation replaces a 2005 Bush administration proposal that was rejected by a federal court.
The rule, which will start going into effect next year,
will cost power plant operators $800 million annually in 2014, according to EPA estimates. That's in addition to the $1.6 billion spent per year to comply with the Bush rule that was still in effect until the government drafted a new one. The agency said the investments would be far outweighed by the hundreds of billions of dollars in health care savings from cleaner air.
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