I have no legal background, so concerning this case, I’m not sure which group of lawyers are the best at making engineering decisions.
I, however, know a hell of a lot more about producing electricity than any non-producer government bureaucrat since making power is my field.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people in this country who understand that along with water vapor, CO2 is the product of perfect combustion, neither of which are pollutants.
Nitrous Oxides, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrocarbons, etc are true pollution, AND they can be reduced by proper control of the combustion process. It is actually beneficial to the power companies to reduce these emissions since it denotes incomplete combustion. You’ll have to burn more fuel to make the same amount of heat for the boilers; it’s less efficient for those plants to actually pollute the air.
Carbon Dioxide on the other hand, can not be reduced by tighter controls. It’s the result of complete combustion. The only way to reduce CO2 of a plant is to make less electricity.
What the populous doesn’t seem to grasp is that the power companies don’t make excess electricity and stockpile it in a warehouse somewhere. The power produced is consumed within a blink of an eye, and the amount the plants make is a direct result of what the people are consuming at that instant.
Since the US gets over 70% of its electricity from fossil fuels, reducing CO2 means either turning off your A/C, TV, computer, space heaters, subways, lightbulbs, ipod chargers, phone chargers, Nissan Leaf/Chevy Volt chargers, washers & dryers, refrigerators, hair dryers, etc., or building another 400 nuclear plants on top of the 104 we have.
What the bureaucrats propose is not as easy as checking the air pressure in your tires every week, bringing a tote bag to the grocery store, drinking tap water instead of bottled, or changing your company logo color to green on Earth Day. It’s a complete change of our lifestyle.
Spot on.