Free Republic

During the 2008 election campaign, Mr. Obama made two things clear. First, that the Constitution of the United States was a reactionary document that stood in the way of socialism. Secondly, that he was going to wage war on coal. The latest arbitrary and capricious EPA regulations requiring a 30 percent cut in national CO2 emissions by 2030 are at root unconstitutional. As Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution says, “All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” The EPA is...

Coal-state lawmakers, accusing President Obama of using a back door to impose strict emissions limits on power plants, are rallying to slam that door shut -- claiming the plan would cost jobs and jack up electric bills. In Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states that rely on coal to fuel their own economies -- and that help generate power for everybody else -- officials vowed Monday to introduce legislation halting the newly announced EPA plan. Under the draft regulation unveiled Monday, carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants would be cut 30 percent by 2030. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., calling...

emissions by nearly 41 percent over the next 15 years as part of a sweeping plan President Barack Obama announced Monday to reduce pollution from power plants. Obama's plan calls for a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions nationwide by 2030, when compared with 2005 levels. It sets different goals for each state, and some that rely heavily on coal won't have to make as many reductions. Minnesota is one of nine states told to reduce their 2012 levels by more than 40 percent, to help meet the nation's overall reduction goal. Officials with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, utilities...

Natural gas is poised to be one of the biggest winners of the Obama administration’s new plan to slash carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating the electric sector’s move away from coal toward the cleaner-burning power source. Despite a modest climb in coal use for electric generation in 2013, it already has fallen out of favor in the power sector, as utilities increasingly turn to natural gas for its cheaper, lower-emission profile. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed standards — requiring states to pare carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent over 2005 levels by 2030 — are likely to hasten that switch. But natural...

The Obama administration knew that it wasn’t going to get applause from all of its fellow Democrats on the regulations released by the Environmental Protection Agency this morning — and not only did officials not expect any, they even gave Congressional Democrats their implicit blessing on the issue. Via Reuters: Democrats in Republican-leaning states have a simple strategy for dealing with President Barack Obama’s upcoming power plant restrictions before the mid-term elections: Fight them, with the White House’s blessing. The new rules, popular with the Democratic Party’s base, are one of Obama’s highest domestic priorities for his second term. …...

In 2008, Barack Obama said his energy plan would cause electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest power plant regulations seem designed to do just that. The EPA’s own regulatory analysis of its rule to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants says it will hike retail electricity by as much as 6.5 percent by 2020 — all while forcing 19 percent of the U.S. coal-fired capacity to shutdown and decreasing coal production by up to 28 percent. “Under the provisions of this rule, EPA projects that approximately 46 to 49 GW of additional coal-fired generation...

"Feeding the masses on unicorn ribs". That was how Walter Russell Mead once poured scorn on Obama's misbegotten attempts to revive the US economy by creating five million "green jobs." Mead was quite right, of course. And there was plenty of evidence to back him up, such as the 2009 report by a Madrid university professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez that for every expensive "green job" created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy. The Obama administration responded as only the Obama administration knows how: by calling in its left-wing attack dogs. Friendly organisations including George Soros's...

The U.S. power sector must cut carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, according to federal regulations unveiled on Monday that form the centerpiece of the Obama administration's climate change strategy. The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal is one of the most significant environmental rules proposed by the United States, and could transform the power sector, which relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity. Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Monday that between 2020 and 2030, the U.S. amount of carbon dioxide the proposal would reduce under the plan would be more...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — As President Barack Obama prepares to announce tougher new air quality standards, lawmakers in several states already are trying to blunt the impact on aging coal-fired power plants that feed electricity to millions of consumers. The Obama administration on Monday will roll out a plan to cut earth-warming pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, further diminishing coal's role in U.S. electricity production in the process. The Environmental Protection Agency refused to confirm the details of the proposal Sunday. People familiar with the proposal shared the details on condition of anonymity, since they...

Wow, this EPA guy (Joseph Goffman, EPA Associate Assistant Administrator & Senior Counsel) thinks that renewables are going to make up 30% of the power grid by 2030. That may be, but the big hidden gotcha in that is that 30% is not power on demand. It is at the whims of wind and clouds. By replacing that much of the power grid with transient energy, look for brown-outs and black-outs in our future. What happens in a major heat wave (which they predict will be more frequent) and the wind does not blow? Watch the video: See also...

Total U.S. energy production reached 81.7 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2013, enough to satisfy 84% of total U.S. energy demand, which totaled 97.5 quads. Natural gas was the largest domestically produced energy resource for the third year in a row and, together with the other fossil fuels (coal, crude oil, and hydrocarbon gas liquids), accounted for more than three quarters of U.S. energy production. In total, the United States consumed 97.5 quads of energy, 82% of which was fossil fuels. Renewable and nuclear energy made up 10% and 8%, respectively, of U.S. energy consumption. The portion of U.S....

<p>The Obama administration took aim at the coal industry on Monday by mandating a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2030 -- despite claims the regulation will cost nearly a quarter-million jobs a year and force plants across the country to close.</p>

Having failed to get the Democrats’ cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, President Obama intends to create it through fiat, with the Environmental Protection Agency scheduled to issue today what amounts to a bill of attainder against coal-fired electricity generators. The regulation will set a national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants and then offer states a phony menu of choices for meeting that standard, stacking the policy deck in such a way as to force them into cap-and-trade programs administered by multistate cartels. It is far from obvious that the Obama administration has anything like the legal authority for this;...

Payday is arriving for clean energy's diehard investors, those optimistic carbon-hating Robespierres who have survived repeated hope and despair, beginning with Bill Clinton's administration. A proposal due from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday is expected to require huge cuts in power plants' carbon-dioxide emissions by 2025. Utilities heavily reliant on coal will be the losers, while those with lots of nuclear plants, like Exelon (ticker: EXC), or with solar or wind generation, will be in hog heaven. Small wonder that clean energy exchange-traded funds rose last week when details of the plan began to leak from the corridors...

There is little doubt among the students in Brandon Cone’s engineering class at Campbell County High School that a war is being waged against coal. The children of the mechanics who fix the mines’ great diesel trucks, the welders who staff their machine shops and the railroad employees who see the final product shipped across the country and beyond have obvious pride in the local industry. “We power a lot of the country just from Gillette,” said Corey Silver, a junior whose father works at the Cordero Rojo mine, a comment widely echoed by his peers. The students’ pride in...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)President Obama on Saturday tried to bolster public support for new rules his administration will announce next week on coal-firing power plants, arguing their carbon emissions are a nation health crisis – beyond hurting the economy and causing global warming. “We don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children,” Obama said in his weekly address. “As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”(continued)

Oklahoma Labor Commissioner Takes On EPA, Federal/State Bureaucracy Like many state and local officials across the country who are struggling against federal EPA regulations that are strangling their economies, Oklahoma Commissioner of Labor Mark Costello is frustrated — and fed up. The New American 30 May 2014 Like many state and local officials across the country who are struggling against federal EPA regulations that are strangling their economies, Oklahoma Commissioner of Labor Mark Costello (shown) is frustrated — and fed up. “They are shutting down a perfectly good [Oklahoma] coal plant,” Commissioner Costello told The New American. “They’re shutting...

Setting the stage for upcoming restrictions on coal-fired power plants, the Obama administration is making a concerted effort to cast its energy policy as an economic success that is creating jobs, securing the nation against international upheavals and shifting energy use to cleaner sources. In a 42-page report to be released Thursday, the White House argues that significant increases in the domestic production of natural gas and reductions in oil consumption have better positioned the United States to advance its economic and environmental goals. Few of the report's conclusions are new, but it includes a detailed analysis of how past...

President Obama is expected to announce on Monday [moved to sometime next week. ed] an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s 600 coal-fired power plants, in a speech that government analysts in Beijing, Brussels and beyond will scrutinize to determine how serious the president is about fighting global warming. The regulation will be Mr. Obama’s most forceful effort to reverse 20 years of relative inaction on climate change by the United States, which has stood as the greatest obstacle to international efforts to slow the rise of heat-trapping gases from burning coal and oil that...

An environmental group is demanding radio stations to pull ads from a national mining group that blast the administration's coal rules.  The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) claims the National Mining Association's ads are "false, misleading, and deceptive." The 60-second radio ads, which are set to run until the end of June, state that the administration's carbon emissions limits on power plants will nearly double consumers electric bills, or increase prices by 80 percent. They are currently running in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan, where some of the more critical races for Democrats are taking place this year.  The...