“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can -- it’s just that it will bankrupt them.” President Obama, 2008
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is forecasting an increase in the number of coal-fired plants that will be prematurely retired due to onerous regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2008, then-Presidential candidate Obama said that if he were elected, any company that wanted to build a coal-fired plant could do so, but it would bankrupt them.[1] The President’s Administration, however, has gone further than to simply make impossible the construction of new coal-fired plants; its regulations are in fact already depleting the current inventory of coal-fired plants that have supplied as much as 50 percent of our nation’s electricity. The Administration should be paying attention because it was coal power that kept the lights and heat on this winter as extreme weather conditions resulted in an escalation in natural gas prices and as wind energy could not produce power when it was needed most.[ii] The intent of the Administration is becoming clear -- to force higher electricity prices on the country through its policies on regulating fossil fuels while forcing more and more subsidized and intermittent renewable energy on an already unstabilized electrical grid. The consequences of these policies will be made clear to Americans in the future due to the likelihood that natural gas prices will not remain low forever. The combination of policies is the perfect recipe for a future of skyrocketing electricity prices, just as he also said in 2008.
