Posted on 05/23/2015 6:36:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
The EPA proposal to impose a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants received more than two million comments from the public - but it looks like it was just one five-page comment from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) that sent EPA scrambling back to the drawing board.
The draft rule mandated the use of so-called carbon capture and storage, a technology that would inject carbon dioxide underground but which has so far proved to be little more than a white elephant experiment. To mandate this technology, the law required the EPA to prove it was "adequately demonstrated" and "commercially available." Thanks to E&E Legal, they failed.
Dawn Reeves at Inside EPA broke the story that carbon capture and storage has apparently been dropped from the agency's final rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions. She also, curiously, reports that the White House may not allow the EPA to back down, instead forcing the agency to defend the legally indefensible in court.
But whether they win now or not until the issue is litigated, E&E Legal has scored a huge victory for the rule of law and economic common sense.
I reached out to Chris Horner, their lead author on the comment that carried the day.
"We submitted comments for the record explaining that EPA had made a mockery of the interagency review process, ignoring the government's own experts in order to push an ideological agenda," Horner said.
That's a crucial point because if the EPA is demonstrably not serving as an expert but an ideological actor, it would not warrant deference in court, making its whole global warming agenda vulnerable.
E&E Legal obtained information proving that expert analysis from the Department of Energy actually concluded the opposite of what the EPA claimed when they asserted that carbon capture and storage had been "adequately demonstrated."
"The truth is that the experts had persuasively argued the opposite, in effect, that carbon capture and storage has been demonstrated to be not viable," Horner said. "Making this more egregious, the Department of Energy had paid a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars to learn this information and lesson that EPA ignored and even misrepresented."
The EPA was caught red-handed faking science and ignoring expert opinion, in effect requiring a technology that they knew did not practically exist. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that their actual intended purpose was indeed to impose a de facto ban on coal-fired power plants. And they might have gotten away with it if E&E Legal hadn't busted them.
The stakes are enormous because the rule on new power plants is also the legal predicate for the EPA's proposed rule regulating existing power plants. That rule establishes numerical emissions reduction targets for the states and coerces states to meet those targets by adopting cap-and-trade tax schemes and other policies that EPA cannot impose itself. All to achieve President Obama's goal of fighting global warming by making electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket."
If the EPA cannot, because of this now-exposed legal vulnerability, rely on carbon capture and storage, then the new source numerical targets will have to be revised up significantly, a major victory.
Unfortunately, the political activists who control the EPA see this as only a necessarily tactical retreat, with retooled rules still certain to impose steeply higher prices on consumers for emissions reductions that will have no impact on global carbon dioxide levels or global average temperatures.
That's why Horner hopes that the biggest impact of E&E Legal's depantsing of the EPA on carbon capture and storage, through a transparency campaign that continues regardless of EPA's rumored move, will be to discredit the EPA enough that Congress will step in to put a stop to the misuse of the 1970 Clean Air Act to do all of this. I couldn't agree more.
The anti technology agenda of the left continues to crumble. It wreaks havoc in the economy and reduces the people to paupers. Progressives are dooming themselves by the simple expedient of instituting their agenda.
Ban the EPA!
Next Prez should CANCEL all EPA rules written in the last 10 years.
NONE are value added to the environment.
Bump
E&E Legal has a track record and it isn’t very impressive. They do have money to spend but the source of the money is not clear
When ever you see a picture of a coal plant like the one above ,why is there always beautiful blue sky ,LOL
The "progressive "position of the EPA is as fabricated as it Gina Mc Carthy and her 'Glowbull Sh*aite Warming' with no documentation or verification.
She makes as much sense as the 'Moonbat' Governor of 'Califux-us-all' who values the snaildarter higher than humanity.
Then let the snaildarter vote for him , and leave the rest of us to vote for sanity.
Ignorance of various epochs, missing cultivers and varieties invites stupidiity !
The EPA is invested into 'BIMBO's FOR STUPIDITY' , and computer models that cannot be rationally reproduced (GI/GO =Garbage in/Garbage out)and even refuses to release their own data.
At what point do we eliminate FICTION , altogether ?
Could it be that no matter what is done, CO2 is still less than .04% of the air we breathe. This whole idea of capturing CO2 is like trying to capture a 'will o' the wisp' which doesn't even exist. Or like trying to actually spot a sasquach.
In theory, it seems like the president should be able to veto any rules or regulations that the EPA proposes.
Likewise, it seems the president should be able to impose his own EPA rules and regulations, as long as they have some basis in empirical fact.
Perhaps I need a 9th grade civics lesson on this?
Any guidance will be appreciated.
The photo shown is taken in the dead of winter. That is steam coming out of the plant, not deadly particulates. It shows far less in the summer.
Uncertainty and the threat of rules are enough to strangle the economy. Who or what company in their right mind would proceed with anything that might be contrary to any proposed or even thought of rule these days? None or not many and that is the reason the economy is in the perpetual dumper.
The threat of rules to stupid to be true in the past and equally stupid rules that have actually been promulgated (that means put into effect for the folks in Rio Linda).
A pervasive climate of uncertainty and threats to every standard we thought we could count on have killed the United States.
Look closer. Look at the right hand side of the photo.
Closer to the horizon, the blue is darker/dirtier and as the elevation rises, the blue gets cleaner and a deeper shade of blue.
That's smog.
The photo is designed to fool the ignorant. That photo was taken in WINTER. Notice the leaves off the trees, and on a very cold day after a cold front has passed through.
The “smoke” is nothing but water vapor coming from a COOLING TOWER. A cooling tower cools the water that has run through condensers that picked up heat in a closed cycle steam generator plant. There is NO POLLUTION in the cooling tower.
Same for the water vapor flowing from other cooling units in the building.
If this was REAL coal fired pollution, the plumes would be a dark grey or even black.
Beat me to it!
That's a crucial point because if the EPA is demonstrably not serving as an expert but an ideological actor, it would not warrant deference in court, making its whole global warming agenda vulnerable.
Then please, please don't check or slow EPA's rush onto the rhino-horn of their own ideological extremism. Just get lots of names for later, and get their phone records.
It all began in 2007 with the case of Massachusetts vs EPA in which SCOTUS ruled that CO2 was a pollutant and EPA should regulate it with the Clean Air Act.
Then senator Obama, then prez Bush, and everyone else agreed that it would be better for Congress to pre-empt EPA and enact legislation to regulate CO2.
They tried that in 2009/2010 with Cap and Trade but for some reason the GOP walked away from the legislation, so Congress failed.
Then Obama/EPA, in 2010, issued their first CO2 regs for new permits and many lawsuits with many plaintiffs were filed. All of the suits were combined into Utility Air Regulatory Group vs EPA and eventually heard by SCOTUS in Feb 2014. SCOTUS, on June 15, ruled almost entirely for EPA, but they did put some limitations on EPA's permitting process. So all the EPA CO2 regs for new permits are in place.
Just prior to this, on about June 1 2014, Obama/EPA would release the CO2 regs for existing permits, and this would be known as the Clean Power Plan. Since then they have been in the comment period and the above article is about the comments that E&E Legal submitted to EPA.
After the comment period ends, in June or soon after, EPA will issue their final rule, after which many lawsuits with many plaintiffs will be filed and that will have to go all the way to SCOTUS for a ruling.
After all the lawsuits are filed, the plaintiffs will go to the DC Court of Appeals and ask for an injunction to stop EPA/Obama from implementing until all the lawsuits can be heard by the courts. If they can get the injunction, they can string it out for many years.
If they can't get the injunction, the EPA/Obama will begin implementing
There has always been smog. That is why the Smokey Mountain are called smokey. And, that was before there was industrialization.
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