Biden EPA Pushing New Power Plant Standards, Risking Already Strained Electric Grid

Biden EPA Pushing New Power Plant Standards, Risking Already Strained Electric Grid

The eco-activists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have gone hog-wild, in terms of issuing new rules that will reduce the quality of life in this nation, while raising the price of energy that is the life’s blood of this country’s economy.

The latest news is that the EPA is slated to issue new rules that will require power plants to install technology to capture carbon emissions to meet the goal of decarbonizing the power sector in 12 years.

If implemented, the Environmental Protection Agency would set limits so stringent that fossil-fuel-burning power plants probably would have to use technology to capture their carbon dioxide emissions from their smokestacks or switch to other fuels to comply, according to the three people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that is not yet public. The proposal is still under final analysis at the White House and could change before the EPA completes and announces it.

The limits could nearly eliminate emissions from fossil-fuel burning plants after the most stringent standards go fully into effect, the people said. Another source familiar with the proposal said that there will be significant cuts to emissions from these plants, but potentially not as dramatic or extreme as others have suggested.

The EPA has been planning an announcement for the coming days, but final details are in flux, and a formal proposal could be more than a week away, according to several people familiar with the planning.

Again, the move is based on all the assumptions about the trace gas, carbon dioxide, being the real mover behind global temperature changes and weather patterns. However, as with green energy technology, the approaches associated with “carbon capture” are currently unproven.

Some industry representatives signaled in comments to the EPA last year that they do not think power plant standards should be based on carbon capture and storage, with the National Mining Association saying it is not an “adequately tested technology.” The group cited failure of a Texas project called Petra Nova that was mothballed in 2020.

Utility Southern Company (SO.N), which is phasing out its large fleet of coal generation, said new gas turbines should be favored “to safeguard electric needs of the U.S.”.

Southern, which also runs the National Carbon Capture Center with the Department of Energy, said commercial deployment of carbon capture technology “is many years away” despite the cost-reduction potential of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The amount of carbon gas needed to be removed to achieve these wild-eye dreams is staggering.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last year that even if we manage to halve emissions by 2030 — already a major challenge — we would still need to rely on carbon dioxide removal technologies, or CDR, to remove CO2 from our air and oceans.

“The deployment of CDR to counterbalance hard-to-abate residual emissions is unavoidable if net-zero carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions are to be achieved,” said the IPCC’s report on emission reduction and mitigation efforts.

Another recent study said humans will need CDR technology to extract between 450 billion and 1.1 trillion metric tons of CO2 by 2100, alongside deep emissions cuts.

Some of the options, like planting more trees and maintaining current forest ecosystems, are relatively straightforward, though they have their own challenges. But new technologies being touted, like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, are still limited and largely untested on a larger scale.

In tandem with the throttling of the efficiency and affordability of electricity, the Biden administration is also thrusting Americans into electric vehicles (EVs).

The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

Limit the fuel choices.  Limit the fuel supply.  Enjoy population control!

However, the EPA’s current stunt may not float with the US Supreme Court, as indicated by the previous ruling on the agency’s attempts to control plant emissions.

The court held that Congress did not grant EPA the authority under the Clean Air Act to devise emissions caps based on the “generation shifting approach” the agency took in the Clean Power Plan, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the 6-3 conservative majority.

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