On Friday, December 30, a U.S. District Court of Appeals made a last-minute decision delaying an important air pollution rule that was supposed to take effect yesterday, January 1. Susan and others here on CleanTechnica have written about the rule, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), in depth a few times … [continued]
All but one of the Senate Democrats – and even seven Republicans – defeated a bill on Thursday that would have blocked the EPA from slashing power plant air pollution that blows downwind to other states and causes lung and heart problems. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and Tea Party … [continued]
The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in January 2012. Opponents of the Obama administration’s “over-reaching” EPA say these are costly regulations. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of this rule will be $130 billion by 2015. But if that figure is correct, that’s good news for the US economy.
Because there is another way of looking at that $130 billion “expense”. One industry’s expense is another industry’s sales bonanza. For the coal industry’s balance sheet, it is an expense, but think about who is going to perform this $130 billion cleanup – fairies? Hardly. This is a job for real American industries.
In the most depressed economy since the Great Depression, a slew of US companies will be selling the clean energy solutions (and adding employees to manufacture them) as coal companies must begin a race to have the least polluting coal plants.
Why do they have to race eachother? Simple. Cap and trade is a sort of a plutocrats’ sack race.
