Posted on 04/26/2024 1:52:02 PM PDT by Twotone
On Thursday, Biden's Environmental Protection Agency announced a new set of rules aimed at reducing pollution from natural gas and coal-fired power plants by 90 percent by 2039. About 42,000 Americans work in the coal industry.
Under the regulations, the nation's 200 or so coal-fired power plants will be forced to abide by strict new emissions standards unless they stop burning coal within ten years, in which case they will be allowed to follow the less stringent existing standards.
According to the rules, a "new compliance path" for coal-fired power plants means they "will be able to continue meeting existing requirements instead of the requirements contained in this final regulation" if they comply with the 2034 deadline. The EPA had previously given coal-fired power plants until 2028 to permanently stop burning the fossil fuel.
The agency noted that the move "will have minimal effects on electricity prices," but "provide billions of dollars in health and environmental benefits each year."
"These water quality, health, and environmental improvements," it explained, "will benefit environmental justice communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution from coal-fired power plants."
The Department of the Interior said that they would be funnelling $140 million into West Virginia and that "This funding is a part of the Biden-Harris administration’s unprecedented investments in communities and workers to support an equitable transition to a sustainable economy and healthier environment after the closure of mines or power plants.
(Excerpt) Read more at thepostmillennial.com ...
The Biden administration will be a footnote in the history books by 2039.
Power? There will be none, as the Biden turns back the US clock to 1932
Hopefully for this Republic when Trump is reelected on his first day he will do what Biden did and sign 100 executive orders counteracting the Biden administration’s foolish attempt at governing by executive oeder.
They can just burn Dollar bills instead.
For every coal-fired power plant the Cadaver terminates, China will fire up two more. Net effect on emissions? Leftists are all in the 3rd grade or lower.
Shouldn’t outlawing coal power be something of such significance that Congress should have a say?
The government should not try to destroy a legal (and vital) industry. Let coal die a natural death, like blacksmithing.
You are right but the toxic run off from their ash piles will be in China’s water supply not ours, same for the mercury from the stack vapor will be in their fresh water lakes not ours. They will have black skys and eye watering smog and acid rain and fish with such high mercury you can’t eat it.
The last point is already a problem here. Canyon Lake Texas has such high mercury you can’t eat the bass from it because its watershed was in the ashfall shadow of a coal plant for 40 years all the mercury rained down into it and forever contaminated the sediments and food web. SMU did the isotopic analysis for where the mercury came from it was directly linked by isotope to the coal plant up wind. I know about that work because I know the PhD geochemistry expert who did it they are a colleague and friend of mine at the PhD level which we both hold more than one of.
Have you ever been to China the pollution is eye watering and enough to make one’s lungs hurt just breathing. The EPA keeps us from having that here any more we used to have pollution of the same levels in the North Eastern USA.
They are not even telling the coal plants here they have to go to zero heavy metal emissions only a 67% reduction. There is no safe level of heavy metal intake into the human body. Every other form of power already is zero emissions of heavy metals so why should coal get a pass on it’s huge amounts of toxic ash, water run off and stack vapors. No other power source does just because it’s grandfathered in they get to emit what all others would be shut down today for in hours not years. The fact that they are getting ten years for compliance says they are getting special treatment.
All of these are real pollution sources with zero to do with CO2.
A final rule strengthening and updating the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for coal-fired power plants, tightening the emissions standard for toxic metals by 67 percent and finalizing a 70 percent reduction in the emissions standard for mercury from existing lignite-fired sources.
A final rule to reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from coal-fired power plants by more than 660 million pounds per year, ensuring cleaner water for affected communities, including communities with environmental justice concerns that are disproportionately impacted.
A final rule that will require the safe management of coal ash that is placed in areas that were unregulated at the federal level until now, including at previously used disposal areas that may leak and contaminate groundwater.
Trump might undo the CO2 portion of Chinese rules we won’t undo the heavy metals, coal ash, and run off nor the wastewater rules those are here to stay. Coal shouldn’t get a free pass to pollute in ways no other power source does that’s not what society will accept any more especially the younger generations. We like clean air and water and not having eye watering smog or acid rain.
Th at said he will never see the inside of the WHouse again either fraud or abortion or both means the D’s install who ever get the D nomination. Or the deepstate will put the Don down like JFK they already did it once in broad daylight they will do it again. There is no voting out of where this country is it’s only normalcy bias that people keep thinking that way.
Nuclear can and should replace coal. We should build fast spectrum reactors on the brownfield sites of the coal plants use the existing turbines, power transformers and powerlines. Demo the coal boilers and put in high temp fast spectrum reactors with molten salt storage systems to make them easy to load follow wirh. This is already being done at a coal plant in Wyoming.
Nuclear doesn’t emit any heavy metals or NOx or SOx or particulate matter. People always say what about stack scrubbers that cost $100 million or more. Well stack scrubbers will never be as clean as natural gas and nuclear is even cleaner. Plus spent fuel is 100% contained and stored in a tiny area. Coal not only always puts some pollution into the sky even with $100 million in scrubbers you cannot get away with the ash it creates. Toxic ash that never decays as it’s chemically toxic for all eternity.
Look at the image at the top of the page it’s factual. Then know that 10 to 45% of that mass will end up as ash of less density.
One storage cask stops the generation of a huge amount of coal ash. Every gram of that ash is toxic and also contains more radioactive released to the environment than nuclear power would release by a million times. Coal ash is just piled up and allowed to leach into the watershed when not if the coal ponds leak they all will leak eventually.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/144mm6e/each_nuclear_waste_cask_can_prevent_4_billion_lbs/
Then think that 95% of the spent fuel in Th at single cask is still fuel when reprocessed so with reprocessing and fast reactors it’s 100 to 1 more energy so that coal pile grows by nearly 99 times larger for the same energy output.
This comes back to my point of you can burn coal once to the sky or you can use it to make concrete and steel for a reactor and get back thousands of times the energy per BTU invested. Same for natural gas burn it once in a turbine and it’s gone forever or burn it in a steel furnace and concrete kiln to make reactor parts again with 1000+ to one return on energy invested. Solar is well over 100 to one in sunny climates and wind is 40 to 100 in class 5 to 8 wind fields respectively. This is how humans should burn coal and natural gas to make things of value That return much more energy than it took to create them.
Power to the people. When the power shortage comes because of their foolishness, cut off the power to Federal departments and agencies ... they produce nothing of use and add nothing to the nation.
Thanks for the info.
♫ Down and down we go, ♫ round and round we go..♫
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