In the latest push for economic suicide in the name of fighting climate change, President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency just unveiled rules aimed at shutting down most of America’s electric plants even if we can’t replace them in time.
The EPA rule would require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to slash their carbon emissions to near-zero within the next decade, or close.
In theory, it gives them the option to install carbon-capture tech to reach its goal (and gas plants the chance to just burn more hydrogen in their mix), but the necessary technology is nowhere close to off-the-shelf yet, and may never be.
Plus, it requires building more pipelines to haul off the captured carbon, and building that infrastructure would be another costly and legally-fraught task.
(The hydrogen the EPA would be OK with isn’t a cheap alternative, either — and would add more real pollution.)
Yes, if the rule goes through it’ll likely get struck down by the Supreme Court, since Congress never authorized the EPA to treat CO2 as a pollutant.
(It’s not, by any measure of health impacts.)
Even so, the EPA move will discourage investment in new and existing carbon-fueled plants: Companies must worry that Democrats will pack the high court (quickly, or the old way as older justices retire) or come up with some constitutional way to shut it all down.
The EPA guesses the rule will cost energy-producers over $10 billion; that’s surely low-balled and again assumes the relevant technology etc. will miraculously appear.
Meanwhile, the chance the nation can build enough solar- and wind-powered electric plants to fill the void is zero.
Enough nuclear power is technically feasible but politically impossible.
We wish this was meaningless posturing, but threats have consequences.
Unless and until the nation firmly rejects the “end carbon emissions now, and ignore the crippling cost” mindset, the lights will literally start going out all across America.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
