While Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu was giving himself an A- grade on gas prices, the White House was rolling out a new rule that would ostensibly require federal agencies to weigh the cumulative effects of energy regulations. It’s a laudable idea in theory, but then again, so was President Obama’s executive order to cut down on regulatory red tape last year. And apparently that was such a runaway success that the White House needed to announce another rule a year later intended to do basically the same thing:
Agencies now will consult stakeholders and the public on how a new rule might interact with existing rules — and whether, for example, a string of upcoming rules on one industry would create an undue burden. Officials will also consider the cumulative effects of rules in their cost-and-benefit analysis, a process that currently weighs the costs against the benefits of each individual rule.
If the White House was serious about weighing the cost-benefit of its energy regulations, it might want to take a look at some of the ways its EPA policies have impacted businesses during the past year. Take GenOn Energy, Inc., a company that was reportedly forced to shut down its energy plant in Ohio due to the financial burden of EPA regulations. Its dilemma was highlighted yesterday at a Senate hearing on the impact of Utility MACT, a new and exceptionally expensive regulation on coal plant emissions:
On February 29th of this year, GenOn Energy, Inc. announced that it would close the coal and fuel-oil fired electric generating plant in Avon Lake in 2015. The Avon Lake Generating Station is capable of generating 734 megawatts, providing baseload electric capacity and load-following capability to the grid, as well as essential peaking capacity and black start capability. This facility plays an important role in providing a reliable and affordable supply of electricity.
The reasons behind the closure are clear. GenOn stated that the closure was a result of the rising costs associated with EPA’s regulations, and the fact that the overwhelming costs associated with complying with the rules could not be recovered by continuing to operate the facility.
It’s not just the closure of the facility that’s the problem. It’s also the loss of jobs, income taxes, property taxes, and energy generation along with it. This isn’t meant to diminish the real concerns over the environmental impacts of coal-fueled power plant emissions. But if the White House claims the benefit of these rules has to be weighed against the costs to communities, businesses and the economy, then it should explicitly address why it believes Utility MACT is worth these job losses and plant closures.
The only people with a BENEFIT of the EPA regulations the way THAT dept has been run the last 20 years is the powermongering Global Warming Marxists trying to set up their own kingdom. n nNOBODY else is gaining anything of BENEFIT – the way the Dept is being run now. All it is is a structure for evil anti-Constitutionalists. They don't have the regulations modeled in a manner that helps the environment – all they do is bleed Citizens of spending power and independence.
Three words that are missed unless you (a) understand that you need electricity to make electricity or (b) remember what was involved in recovering from the 1966 blackout when, fortunately, the old abandoned magneto plants hadn't yet been torn down. n n"Black start capability." That is a biggie — think starting a car with a dead battery. Electricity is generated by spinning a coil of wires through a magnetic field, except that the magnets are elecromagnets (your car alternator works the same way) and you have to have electricity for the field or you can spin the thing all day and nothing will happen. You also need electricity for a bunch of other things, pumping water into the boiler to make steam, etc, and this includes some safety features which prevent the boiler from blowing up, exploding boilers tending to not be much fun…. n n"Black start" is when the grid has crashed and you have NO electricity and need to start getting things going. Picture all the cars in the parking lot having a dead battery, but one has a standard transmission so you get all the guys to push it and you put a slender girl in it and have her put it into third gear and quickly let the clutch loose when the vehicle gets moving good, and the engine catches and then you nurse it until it is charging its own battery and then once it is going good, you start jumping the other cars. n nNow, if you can't get the first car going, you are f****d. It is that simple. And every bit as simple with the grid as well. Back in 1966, they started a wood and then coal fire in one of the tiny obsolete not-yet-torn-down generators and used *ALL* of its output to start a slightly bigger one, and then used both of them to start a slightly bigger one — again, these all abandoned and should have been destroyed but they hadn't gotten around to tearing down the buildings yet — we were really lucky because the presumption was that you just pull the power off the grid to start a turbine except that the grid was dead. So they had to slowly build up capacity….. n nEver since then, we have talked about "black start capability" — how we reboot the system, where we start from if there is no electricity in the grid. And of course Obama doesn't know this…. n nBut if anything goes wrong — including terrorism and sunspots — without black start capability somewhere in the grid, we will NEVER get electricity back on…. EVER….