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Will proposed EPA coal regulations have us freezing in dark?

Yesterday I got a blast email from the conservative Heartland Institute with respect to the proposed EPA ruling on coal plants. It was the same as the news release on their website.  It is a bad caricature of what passes for public policy debate.  In fact, it does a dis-service to those who may have legitimate reasons to oppose this type of overarching federal regulation, or concerns about the implementation timeline. With its over-the-top rhetoric, it just makes this type of opposition look, well, unreasonable.

Here is one excerpt (from Joseph Blast, President):

President Obama and the Democrats are once again unleashing the Environmental Protection Agency on the American people. This is Obamacare for the environment: guaranteed to raise costs, reduce choices, and destroy an existing industry. By the time EPA is finished, millions of Americans will be freezing in the dark.

I rather doubt it, but I have been wrong before…

Here’s another good one (John Coleman, Meteorologist):

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a naturally occurring trace gas in the atmosphere that is essential to life on Earth. All fauna, including humans, emit CO2 when we breathe out. All flora, from vegetables to weeds to trees, must have CO2 for photosynthesis. It is invisible and odorless.

Water is naturally occurring. It’s colorless and odorless too.  I need water as well, and in fact I could not live without it.  But when I get too much of it, my house floods (as do my lungs, if I stay inside said house too long). So I’m not too convinced by this point.

But here’s my favorite (Marita Noon, Executive Director
Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy):

All the regulations the administration may impose will not motivate the rest of the world to follow our bad policies. Just because we declare that we won’t pee in the pool, (that) won’t stop the others. And, just like the water in the pool, CO2 emissions are fungible. We’ll be stuck in our little no-pee section with a crippled economy while the rest of the world will be frolicking in unfettered growth.

One issue overlooked here is that the cost of the energy is only part of the equation.  In fact, it is the cost of services you get from your kilowatt-hour –  the kWh combined with your end use technology – that matters.  It’s really the cost of your illumination, your warm house, and your cold beer that hits your wallet, not the cost of the kWh.  I’m not saying that cents-per-kilowatthour is irrelevant.  Only that it is part of the overall equation.


So if you don’t want to freeze in the dark, you might want to grab a few efficient light bulbs (the CFLs aren’t so great, but the new LEDs are quite good), and put in some insulation.  That would be a good start.

The other thing you might want to do would be to fill in the pool.  It’s expensive to run those things, with the pumps, the filters and perhaps a water heater. Plus, you never know who’s been in that pool lately…

Source: Forbes