Posted on 06/15/2025 12:22:56 PM PDT by george76
Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposed repeal of the Biden-era’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, which ruled that coal-fired and many new natural gas power plants must capture and store over 90% of their carbon emissions by the 2030s—or shut down by 2040. It’s a costly mandate, resting on shaky legal and technical foundations. Americans would be fortunate to have it repealed.
President Biden issued his Clean Power Plan 2.0 after the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that President Obama’s Clean Power Plan 1.0 exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statutory authority. The Court’s 2022 decision concluded that the EPA had overstepped by attempting to reshape the nation’s energy grid without clear congressional approval.
In a world where energy security and affordability are paramount, one might assume that when the Supreme Court strikes down a sweeping environmental regulation, the EPA would reconsider its approach. But in Washington, ideology often trumps reason, and undeterred, the Biden administration returned in 2024 with a sequel that EPA now proposes to end.
The Clean Power Plan 1.0 attempted to force states to overhaul their energy systems entirely, compelling them to adopt renewable energy and shutter fossil fuel plants, regardless of local needs or economic consequences.
Its successor, the Clean Power Plan 2.0, imposed an estimated $15 billion in regulatory costs over 20 years, and greater costs through increases in prices of electricity and slower economic growth. EPA argues “that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.”
Just as Chief Justice John Roberts warned in 2022 that the EPA had claimed “an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority,” the EPA was trying to do through regulation with the Clean Power Plan 2.0 what Congress had repeatedly declined to do through legislation.
Fifteen years ago similar legislative proposals—the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman bills—failed in the U.S. Congress even when Democrats held strong majorities. That should have signaled to regulators that such sweeping changes lacked democratic legitimacy.
Yet ideology brooks no dissent, and the Biden administration’s Clean Power Plan 2.0 pressed ahead, relying on technologies that are neither commercially viable nor widely demonstrated. Carbon capture and storage, the linchpin of the Biden plan, remains prohibitively expensive and technically uncertain. Hydrogen, another favored solution, is not cost-effective. The EPA’s cost-benefit analysis glossed over these realities, assuming generous tax subsidies and benefits from reduced CO2 emissions would bridge the gap.
The consequences of this regulatory ambition are stark. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned in 2024 that the Biden plan’s disincentives for baseload power would destabilize the electricity grid, increasing the risk of blackouts. Spain’s recent 12-hour blackout offers a cautionary tale: rapid transitions to solar without reliable baseload power can lead to lack of backup power, causing the grid to crash.
Moreover, the Biden plan was regressive. It would raise electricity prices, disproportionately affecting low-income households, farmers, and small businesses. It would also undermine a reliable electricity grid and economic growth. By constraining energy supply and inflating costs, it would drive economic activity and jobs offshore, where goods would be manufactured with coal-fired energy in China.
The dirty secret, which Mr. Zeldin forced into the open, is that the Biden plan would not have helped the climate. The greenhouse gases emitted by the power sector do not significantly affect human health, and moving energy intensive manufacturing overseas where it is made with coal-fired power using older technology would have raised emissions, not lowered them.
There is also a deeper constitutional issue at play. The EPA is misusing its authority under the Clean Air Act to pressure states into adopting policies that lie outside its jurisdiction. The plan’s emissions targets are so stringent that no state has voted them into law.
The Clean Power Plan 2.0 amounts to a form of federal commandeering. States are faced with a loss of a significant portion of their electricity generation capacity, and their manufacturing base, by restructuring their energy systems to align with the EPA’s vision. This is not cooperative federalism; it is coercion.
And it is unnecessary. America’s carbon emissions have declined by about a billion metric tons over the past 15 years without such mandates. This progress has been driven by technological innovation, not federal diktats. Cleaner air and efficient power generation are worthy goals, but they must be pursued within the bounds of the law and with respect for democratic processes.
The lesson from West Virginia v. EPA is clear: transformative policy changes require legislative backing. Agencies cannot conjure sweeping powers from ambiguous statutes. The rule of law demands clarity, accountability, and restraint.
As America grapples to ensure grid reliability, there is a cautionary tale here. The path to a reliable energy future lies not in top-down mandates, but in innovation, cooperation, and respect for the institutions that safeguard our freedoms. Administrator Zeldin should be congratulated.
If you care about the common folk and worry about climate change, then make sure the people have cheap and plentiful electricity.
I even look forward to the day when rotating vertical vegetable gardens are a part of middle class kitchens.
After Texas Power Grid Disaster Jen Psaki Was Asked Why Biden Signed Executive Order Giving China Access To U.S. Power Grid - The WH Press Secretary Has No Answer..
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3936572/posts
FJB and the Doctor he rode in with.
CO2 is plant food. Ask yourself why greenhouses either burn natural gas inside or in summer use tanked in CO2 to raise the levels to 1000-1400 ppm...It triples yields of most C3 plants. The weed hydroponics guys all CO2 enhance the growing air.
CO2 is a proxy for communism level control of energy and more importantly petrochemicals and manufacturing. Why don’t China care about CO2 they are already communist that is why.
Natural gas should be the very last fuel burnt and only for peak use never baseload. Gas is a limited resource and every chemical engineer skreeks in pain watching natural gas be burnt to the sky for cheap power now vs petrochemicals,fertilizers,polymers,lubricants and medications later.
Coal should be gasified underground thus leaving the toxic metals ,ash and particulates where they belong under miles of solid stable rock. The gas that comes up can be cleaned to ppb levels of NOx,SOx and PM2.5 it’s volume is low enough if you don’t use nitrogen based air for the gas generation to use active carbon scrubbers in a triple pass to grab all the mercury ,lead, cadmium,Vd,U,Th all the nasty heavy metals coal is full of.
There is 8 times as much unmineable coal as what can be mined that is too deep, to inclined ,under the continental shelf or too think bedded. With modern DD drilling all of it is directionally drillable. Turbines don’t care if they burn methane or syngas from coal gasification. Syngas is also useful for FT synthesis to make linear alkanes and paraffins. Diesel is a paraffin, so is motor oils. Propane,butane,methane are linear alkanes.
Having both on-site at the well head of a UCG site means you can switch products from chemicals to electrons while keeping the gas flowing continuously which UCG needs to function or you just baseload burn that gas and don’t load follow at all.
It’s been pointed out a number of times the USA has 17 trillion cubic meters of gas and yes that is shake gas, and we burn 1 trillion cubic meters per year it should be self evident why burning gas at that volume for power generation is foolish we need it for petrochemicals more.
The bush/obama/Trump and biden administrations have all FAILED to protect the American people. This must be done, somehow, NOW.
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.30 cents a kw here in California.
The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant produces electricity at .6 cents a kw. Newsom and the democrats were going to have both reactors closed in 2024 and 2025 even though it produces nearly 9% of the power for California!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
When prices started to go way up and Newsom was worried about his chances at being president going away so he ordered the plant to stay open till 2030.... with still nothing in place to replace it once the plant closes.
Prices will skyrocket just like gas in the state is double what the rest of the country is and is expected to be over $8 a gallon due to refineries leaving the state by the fall of 2026!
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