Unfortunately for the American public and the coal industry, the EPA has finalized its so-called “Clean Power Plan” and other rules affecting existing and new power plants. It is now clear that these regulations will cause electricity prices to rise considerably and cause potential brown outs and black outs due to a less reliable electric grid. EPA purports to have made changes to deal with reliability issues that arose from its earlier proposed plan, but the changes to the proposed Clean Power Plan will just make the rule more costly. This is particularly true since it upped the mandated carbon dioxide reduction by electric power plants by 9 percent, now requiring states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The original proposed amount was a 30-percent reduction.

EPA sees its finalized plan resulting in renewable energy garnering a 28 percent share of electricity generation in 2030, up from 22 percent in its proposed plan, while coal generation falls to 27 percent, down from about 40 percent today. EPA’s analysis of the proposed plan expected coal generation’s share to drop to 31 percent in 2030. An analysis of the earlier proposed plan using EPA’s own modeling showed the impact of that plan to affect global temperature by a mere 0.02 degrees Celsius in the year 2100, an almost undetectable amount.

Source: http://instituteforenergyresearch.org