Lawmakers & interest groups clash as Obama prepares to announce performance standard for power plant

Lawmakers and Washington interest groups are engaged in a battle over whether looming EPA rules will help or hurt as President Obama prepares to announce a highly anticipated performance standard for power plants June 2.

The proposed standard will require existing natural gas and coal-fired power plants to release no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity - easily done with natural gas but unobtainable by present day coal plants.

Although coal still provides almost 40 percent of U.S. electricity, the White House's new point man on energy, John Podesta, said Wednesday that climate change necessitates coal’s demise. "President Obama believes we have a moral obligation to act now to curb climate change," he said.

While Podesta affirmed the president's commitment to address climate change, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was releasing a study that found the new standard will result in the loss of 224,000 jobs every year through 2030 and impose $50 billion in annual costs.

"The American household will lose $586 billion of disposable income. That means a household losing over $3,400 of income they'd otherwise be spending on something else," said Karen Harbert of the Chamber of Commerce.

Types of coal don’t make that much difference in the amount of CO2 they release. Of the 3 major types, on average they produce 2.14 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt hour kWh of electricity. (From eia.gov website http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11)

Natural gas, despite the impression given by Obama, DOES release CO2 into the atmosphere. For that same kWh of electricity, natural gas releases 1.22 pounds of CO2.

The difference is: 57%.

So, in this article Obama is going to cause economic mayhem for America, so that, instead of 1000 pounds of CO2 being introduced into the atmosphere, we release 570 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, China, India, Southeast Asia, and most of the developing world, and lots of the developed world, are not buying this stuff. They are driving on full speed ahead with coal. (Which they buy from us for the most part...pure hypocrisy on Obama’s part who knows this.)

IIRC, a megawatt hour is enough to power 100,000 homes for a year. Assuming we have 3 people per home in America, that means 100,000,000 homes will produce 500 tons of CO2 a year using coal, and will use 285 tons using natural gas.

In the meantime, the rest of the world (if using at our rate) is using 10000 tons, and Obama’s dumb economic move will reduce that by 215 to 9785 tons.

By the way, if you had 10,000 tons of water that would be about 2.5 million gallons of water. There’s a swimming pool in Chili that holds 66 million gallons of water, and there’s a not so large one in south Florida that holds 700,000 gallons of water. A pool that’s 5 feet deep, 400 feet long, and 200 feet wide would hold 2.5 million gallons of water.

That’s the same weight as ALL of the CO2 released by the world in a year in producing power for 6 billion people if all were producing at the same rate as the US (which they probably aren’t.)

Enough to fill a not so deep swimming pool that’s not a whole lot bigger than a football field.

And that is causing the polar caps to melt, the seas to rise, destruction and death for all of us.

I’m calling BS on that.

The U.S. has unlimited amounts of coal

The communists/democrats and Obama are destroying the coal industry for a hoax called global warming. this proves government is unaccountable, and a cancer that must be abolished

global warming is a hoax democrats created to justify the existence and growth of government(socialism)

There is nothing wrong with using coal. CO2 emissions cause nothing

we should be using this coal to lower energy costs for consumers and businesses .

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.