Free Republic

Democrat Climate Change Cult: Ban Everything! Ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have agreed to eliminate all coal-fired power plants by 2035. The countries that are members of the Group of Seven (G7) are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. This declaration was made by Andrew Bowie, a UK minister at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, during an interview in Turing, Italy. “We do have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” Bowie said. “This is, by...

To no thinking person’s surprise, China’s President Xi Jinping told Communist Party leaders that saving the planet from global warming won’t come at the expense of China’s economic growth or the comfort of its people. Greens had been pointing to China’s efforts at cutting carbon emissions as an example other nations should follow. As it turns out, President Xi knows that cutting emissions will cut growth—something Xi is not willing to do. Democratic politicians continue to babble about “sustainable growth” and “carbon neutral industries.” Xi knows the truth and won’t allow China to play games with its economic future just...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's first emission standards for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. In its ruling, the court rejected state and industry challenges to rules designed to clean up chromium, arsenic, acid gases, nickel, cadmium as well as mercury and other dangerous toxins. The EPA’s determination in 2000 that regulating emission standards is appropriate and necessary, and the agency’s reaffirmation of that determination in 2012, “are amply supported by EPA’s findings regarding the health effects of mercury exposure,” said the court. Congress did not specify what...

Akron, Ohio, January 26, 2012 — FirstEnergy Corp. generation subsidiaries will retire six older coal-fired power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1, 2012. The decision to close the power plants is based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations. The total capacity of the competitive plants that will be retired is 2,689 MW. Recently, these plants served mostly as peaking or intermediate facilities, generating, on average, about 10 percent of the electricity produced by the company over the past three years. The following plants...

The Kentucky Utilities Electric Power Plant in Ghent, shown here in a 2002 file photo, is one of some 600 coal-fired power plants in the US. At least 86 older plants will be forced into early retirement as a result of a new EPA rule, unveiled Thursday. The EPA’s tough new air pollution regulations will force scores of older, dirty, inefficient plants to shut down. Those that remain open must dramatically clean up their emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency hopes these and other measures will improve air quality across 27 states. Effects should appear relatively quickly. Under the new Cross-State...