The Environmental Protection Agency’s recently announced decision to, in effect, ban the construction of traditional coal-fired power plants in the United States is a non-solution to a hypothetical problem, enacted upon a legal basis that is shaky and an economic basis that is nonexistent. The cost-benefit analysis is almost entirely one-sided: The costs will be very high, and the benefits the EPA hopes to secure will remain out of reach. The EPA is demanding that new U.S. plants that will use coal to generate electricity must meet standards that today are met by no commercial coal-fired plant operating anywhere in...