President Obama, through the EPA, is mandating a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions, by 2030, from fossil-fuel fired electrical generating plants. The regulations will require each state to come up with a plan specifying the method for the reduction by 2017, and if they don’t, the EPA will impose a plan upon them.
This mandate will hit coal-fired plants the hardest. We currently get about 40 percent of our electricity from such plants. These regulations have the potential to make our national electricity grid much less secure because plant closures will reduce our capacity to weather times of high electrical demand.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a new report on the effects of the Obama administration’s proposed new carbon dioxide emission regulations. “Our analysis shows that Americans will pay significantly more for electricity, see slower economic growth and fewer jobs, and have less disposable income. Potential EPA regulations would result in a very slight reduction in carbon emissions, which would be overwhelmed by global increases.”
The Chamber estimates that as many as 224,000 jobs would be eliminated through 2030 and that the new regulations would impose costs on industry of $50 billion per year through 2030. The report also estimates that if the regulations are enacted, consumers would have to pay an estimated $289 billion more for electricity and their disposable income would decrease by $586 billion thus producing a “sustained lower standard of living for the U.S. population.” Read the full report here.
These draconian regulations are part of Obama’s Climate Action Plan to fight the phantom menace of global warming. So what will be the effect on global warming?
As noted in a National Review article by Patrick J. Michaels of the CATO institute, “The EPA’s own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018ºC in warming by 2100…In fact, dropping the carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of electrical generation to zero would reduce warming by a grand total of 0.04ºC by 2100.”
In other words, these new regulations will have no effect on climate even if you believe that carbon dioxide emissions play a significant role. It is just an exercise in radical environmental religion with perhaps some crony capitalism thrown in. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail in the next election.
See also:
Obama’s Climate Action Plan is Clueless and Dangerous