Speaking of the EPA - Forcing Pennsylvania to downsize - Granite Grok

Speaking of the EPA – Forcing Pennsylvania to downsize

EPA BustedReally!  With their new coal industry killing regulations, and that PA’s electrical generation is heavily skewed to coal,well, the obvious is about to happen. From Junk Science (“Pennsylvania prepares to downsize economy rather than build more power plants“), we see that (with all due respect to Mary Poppins)  “money will make the crap go down, the crap go down”:

Using less electricity will become more lucrative for Pennsylvania universities, government agencies and industries when coal-fired power plants close during the next several years.

A regional power-management group is boosting payouts to organizations that conserve voluntarily, offering money if they curtail demand on summer’s hottest days. Maximum payouts will climb about 33 percent by 2017, management group PJM Interconnection told the Tribune-Review.

The move should help contain power prices for residential customers and small businesses by easing pressure on limited supply, industry observers said.

“It really is just supply and demand,” said Stu Bresler, a vice president with Montgomery County-based PJM. “If customers are able to shift their demand, there would be less need for additional capacity for generation or transmission.”

That is, for the replacement capacity, for the current capacity being taken away by bureaucrats.

…Regulators will be challenged as utility companies consider shutting more coal-fired plants because of stricter federal environmental laws. Completed and anticipated closures — including Hatfield’s Ferry Power Station in Greene County and Mitchell Power Station in Washington County, both owned by FirstEnergy Corp. — will cut 10 percent of the PJM region’s generating capacity by 2017, according to the group

We are now in the phase of history of the US where our Government is forcing us to be happy with less – that our centralized command and control DC based Government has deemed that we don’t need, we shouldn’t have, the energy we could have.  An arbitrary decision that can affect millions.  Nice to see that the EPA is single handedly is destroying an entire industry (coal) and deindustrializing an entire State.  All on its own.  All without it being legislated.  All by people that are unaccountable and unassailable.  All because Congress are now cowards to stand up and make the decisions that our Constitutional Republic demands of them.

Is it the Proper Role of Government to pick winners and losers at this scale? Should it HAVE the ability to do this?  Is America supposed to be the Land of Opportunity, or are we being relegated by regulation to only the opportunities left to us by Government?

And at the end of the article that is linked to by Junk Science is this:

With coal still a primary fuel for that power, Kirtley said a hypothetical mass closure of all coal plants at once could destabilize the grid.

With Obama and his eco-wackos at the EPA, that would be grounds for a party (but a funereal for the real of us).  Too often, we see our Elected Leaders having to fight the battles AFTER bureaucrats have made the decisions the the CongressCritters should have made in the first place – this is a PERFECT example of Congress transferring its authority to the Executive Branch – with all of the results we are now seeing.
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