Fantastic. The EPA Science Advisory Board had objected to the CCS mandate as not-ready-for-prime-time. But the darn-the-facts Obama EPA ignored its own hand-picked SAB’s advice in order to rush through the rule that essentially banned new coal plants. President Trump is now rolling that back. Does this mean utilities will be building new coal plants? Not yet. It will take BURN MORE COAL to make that happen.
The irony: “This rule really doesn’t reflect what is going on in the electric sector.” This is because many utilities have announced much deeper coal cuts than required by the Clean Power Plan. But announcements are not done deals. We need your support to prevent the announcements from becoming done deals.
While electric utilities quietly support the rollback of the Clean Power Plan via rulemaking comments (see below), they loudly boast about abandoning coal as fast as they can. What’s really going on is that the Clean Power Plan rollback has become almost irrelevant to the future of coal. Utility promises to abandon coal far exceed in scope and timeframe what would be required under the CPP. Taking their comments at face value, the utilities quietly support the CPP rollback to preserve their options — i.e., so they back out of closing coal plants when their natural gas/wind/solar/battery storage plans inevitably fail.
Continue reading Do electric utilities really support rolling back the Clean Power Plan?