Flap’s Links and Comments for August 25th on 08:58
These are my links for August 25th from 08:58 to 09:02:
- Texas Railroad Commission urges AG to challenge EPA cross-state pollution rule – The Texas Railroad Commission is asking Attorney General Greg Abbott to "bring a prompt legal action" to delay implementation of a new Environmental Protection Agency rule that state officials say would jeopardize electric reliability in the state.
Luminant, the Dallas-based power generator, maintains that the planned Jan. 1 implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, designed to curb air pollution from power plants, would force it to mothball some operations and would significantly lower revenue as a result of reduced electricity generation and wholesale power sales.
The biggest impact is expected to be at Luminant plants in East Texas that burn lignite coal, which the company also mines in the region.
The Railroad Commission, in a letter to Abbott dated Tuesday, said the rule "will have serious adverse economic consequences for Texas without demonstrable environmental and health benefits."
The commission said the rule "threatens the viability of the Texas lignite mining industry, its jobs and associated economic activity" and "many coal-fired power plants may be forced to limit or shut down operations" as a result of the regulation.
The commission noted that it regulates the surface mining of lignite coal.
"About 45 percent of the electric power generated in Texas comes from coal, and almost 40 percent of that coal is Texas lignite, which provides Texans with jobs and a low-cost fuel," the commission said in the letter.
The "potential loss of lignite for power significantly threatens electric reliability in Texas" and is needed "to keep the lights on," the commission added. The chairwoman of the Public Utility Commission and officials who run the state's power grid have expressed similar concerns.
EPA officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
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But, the Feds don;t care. It is the environment and to hell with Texas and Texas business.
- EPA’s Looming Blackouts – Energy: It won't matter which light bulbs we use as the administration's implementation of cross-state pollution rules shuts down coal plants across the country. Where will the jobs be when the lights go out?
It's called the Cross-State Pollution Rule, announced last month, and its implementation over the next 18 months will likely result in the loss of a fifth of the nation's electricity-generating capacity.
The result will be likely power shortages, skyrocketing rates and inevitable brownouts and rolling blackouts.
Based on Bush-era EPA proposals that the federal courts threw out in 2008, this latest example of legislation is designed to usurp state powers to regulate their in-state emissions by making it a federal issue on the grounds pollution crosses state lines.
The rule requires coal companies in 27 states to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 73% and 54%, respectively, from 2005 levels by 2014. "Just because wind and weather will carry air pollution away from its source at a local power plant doesn't mean that pollution is no longer that plant's responsibility," says Environmental Protection Agency Chief Lisa Jackson.
The targets are states such as Texas that not only resist federal encroachment on their powers but dare to try to balance environmental quality. The EPA claims huge health gains as its justification, but those claims are in doubt. Poverty and joblessness, which this and other EPA rules will create, carry their own health risks.
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