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New EPA regulations could force the closure of 65 percent of coal plants across the country, A Duke University study shows. That trend can already be seen in Indiana. Duke Energy officials is planning to close four of its coal processing units at its Wabash River Facility in 2015. They are still deciding whether to transition a fifth unit to a natural gas processor. Duke Energy Spokesman Lew Middleton says since 1990, Duke has spent about $2.8 billion to upgrade its Indiana facilities so they comply with EPA regulations. “These units here at Wabash River—units two, three, four and five—are...

Al Armendariz's big mouth cost him his job as a regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now that he's working for the Sierra Club, Armendariz appears even more opinionated about the industry he once regulated.In his first comments since resigning from EPA in April, Armendariz unloaded on the coal industry, called President Obama the most environmental president ever, and attacked the state of Texas for fighting the EPA in court. He also addressed the controversy surrounding his comments comparing the EPA's philosophy to the brutal tactics used by the ancient Roman army to intimidate its adversaries.Armendariz's most pointed comments...

Facing declining demand for electricity and stiff federal environmental regulations, coal plant operators are planning to retire 175 coal-fired generators, or 8.5 percent of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). A record-high 57 generators will shut down in 2012, representing 9 gigawatts of electrical capacity, according to EIA. In 2015, nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity from 61 coal-fired generators will be retired. While many of those coal plants are old and relatively inefficient, the scope of this new planned shutdown is unprecedented. “The coal-fired capacity expected to be...

Plant owners and operators report to EIA that they expect to retire almost 27 gigawatts (GW) of capacity from 175 coal-fired generators between 2012 and 2016. In 2011, there were 1,387 coal-fired generators in the United States, totaling almost 318 GW. The 27 GW of retiring capacity amounts to 8.5% of total 2011 coal-fired capacity. The coal-fired capacity expected to be retired over the next five years is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period (6.5 GW). Moreover, based on EIA data, the approximate 9 GW of coal-fired capacity retirements expected to occur in...

In obscure, blue-collar towns across Appalachia -- places that most Americans have never seen -- generations of coal miners have toiled away at back-breaking labor to power American homes and industry. Now, as many as 200,000 of them who dig, process, transport and burn America's most abundant fuel are threatened by EPA's latest coal rule. It imposes a standard for emissions that is all but impossible for many plants to meet. It requires coal-fired plants to release no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. The only means for many older plants to attain that standard is...

Sherburne County Generating Station, better known as Sherco, is a power-producing workhorse. But even good workhorses head to the glue factory eventually. The 2,400 megawatt coal-fired plant in Becker, 45 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, has generated the bulk of Xcel Energy's electricity for Minnesota for more than three decades.

There are very real consequences to the Environmental Protection Agency’s continued efforts to undermine America’s coal industry. Those consequences were recently spotlighted in an industry-produced video, embedded above. Maria Tworek owns a sports bar in Omaha, Nebraska. “Our energy bills are sky-high,” Tworek explains. The bar has to keep its cooling facilities running 24/7 to keep all of its beer cold. If “we can’t cool our product, we don’t make money,” Tworek says. “It’s as simple as that.” The bar is Tworek’s livelihood. “This is how we live,” she says. “This is how we support our family.” Nebraska is a...

New rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions will make it nearly impossible to build new coal power plants The Obama administration effectively blocked the construction of any new coal-fired power plants on Tuesday, introducing rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the next generation of plants. The proposed new standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions on new power plants in half and will, over time, help move America away from the carbon-heavy plants that currently produce nearly half of the country's electricity, Lisa Jackson, the head of the environmental protection agency, told a conference call with reporters. "Right now there...

The Obama administration is surging forward with a first-of-its-kind EPA rule for new power plants, in what Republicans and industry groups say will inflate electricity prices and possibly kill off coal, the preeminent U.S. energy source. The EPA announced the rule Tuesday, with a goal to curb carbon dioxide emissions by imposing strict regulations on new coal-fired plants, including a limit that caps plant emissions to not more than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energy generated. "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put...

Excerpt from Steven Chu's April 23, 2007 presentation at UC Berkeley. See transcript here:

(Reuters) - The Obama administration proposed on Tuesday the first ever standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, a move likely to be hotly contested by Republicans and industry in an election year. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the long-delayed rules that limit emissions from all new U.S. power stations, which would effectively bar the building of any new coal plants. While the rules do not dictate which fuels a plant can burn, they would require any new coal plants essentially to halve carbon dioxide emissions to match those of efficient gas plants. "We're putting in place...

EPA Proposes Strict Limits on Coal Plants By RYAN TRACY And KEITH JOHNSON WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed strict limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants despite warnings from utilities and others that such a step to would lead to the demise of coal-fired electricity generation. The agency outlined a standard that analysts said would effectively ban new coal-fired stations unless they use carbon-capture technology, which hasn't yet been proven cost-effective. The EPA said the rule wouldn't apply to existing power plants, including when they make modifications to comply with other air-pollution rules, addressing a major concern...

If you thought gas prices will never stop rising, just wait until you see what happens to electricity after the Barack Obama’s EPA gets its way.  The agency will deliver on Obama’s election promise to bankrupt any new coal-fired electrical production in its first-ever regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions, the Washington Post reports.  The new regulatory regime will all but guarantee that new coal-fired plants won’t be built to replace others shutting down: The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move...

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...

To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time. Its “estimates” are bogus. Its claims of lives saved are bogus. It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation from the loss of the energy it needs to function. It must be challenged to unleash the huge economic benefits of energy resources—coal, oil, and natural gas—that can reverse our present economic decline. The latest outrage is the MACT rule—an acronym for “maximum achievable control technology” intended...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled rules for coal-fired power plants that mean costly investments passed on to consumers, but also health benefits. Hundreds of older plants — which together make up the largest remaining source of unchecked toxic air pollution in the United States — will have to cut emissions or shut down. "By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health," Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

This article is a few days old, but it is worth a mention nonetheless. Susan Kraemer at CleanTechnica can barely contain her excitement at the prospect of environmental regulations. In an article titled "Obama's EPA Cues 130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution By 2015", she reports that the EPA will shut down 20 percent of coal plants through the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. (Snip) The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in

Posted on September 12, 2011 at 11:45 am by Tom Fowler in Coal, Electricity, Energy demand, Environment, Environmental Protection Agency

In an attempt to push back the government overreach that has been killing jobs in the country since Obama’s red-tape machine arrived in DC, Texas has decided to sue the EPA over rules that threaten to shut down coal fired plants. Texas, under Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott, has been at the forefront of the 10th Amendment movement seeking to reign in the federal government’s repeated attempts to micromanage, manhandle and mismanage almost every aspect of the citizens’ personal and professional lives.      “The Texas Attorney General’s office ‘will pursue every available legal remedy’ to prevent the...

Chalk it up to politics as usual. There's no question the ill-advised decision by Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby to reject an air quality permit needed for Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to add two power plants to its Holcomb facility was a political one -- triggered, no doubt, by dreams of higher office of his boss, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who once told folks here she wouldn't stand in the way of Sunflower's expansion, yet turned on that pledge in opposing the plan amid political debate over global warming. Bremby's ruling was a blow to southwest...