Guest Post: Federal carbon plan will make energy costs soar - Granite Grok

Guest Post: Federal carbon plan will make energy costs soar

By Rep. VICTORIA SULLIVAN for the Concord Monitor:

As the home of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, New Hampshire residents are going to have plenty of opportunities in the coming months to find out where national, state and local candidates stand on critical policies. If they value their pocketbooks and want federal agencies to operate within their legal jurisdiction, their first concern should be the Environmental Protection Agency’s costly and illegal carbon reduction plan.

In an obvious effort to shore up his environmental legacy, President Obama and the EPA are backing an expensive scheme to reduce carbon emissions by power generators. Disappointingly, New Hampshire Attorney General Joseph Foster has chosen to support the president’s efforts and leave the fate of our electricity system up to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

However, attorneys general and elected officials from 27 states are not standing by while the president flouts the rule of law to cement his legacy. They have filed a federal lawsuit against the EPA based on the fact that the Clean Air Act specifically forbids it from regulating emissions from existing power plants.

We need protection from a plan that will rob our nation of 45,000 megawatts of much-needed coal-fired electricity, more than the entire electricity supply of New England. Adding insult to injury, more than 70,000 megawatts of coal capacity is already headed for retirement because of existing EPA mandates. As a nation and a state, we simply cannot afford to have this much baseload power disappear without a reliable, affordable alternative.

If our leaders don’t band together to stop this rule, electricity rates will soar. A NERA Economic Consulting study predicts double-digit electricity price increases in 40 states, with 14 states facing peak year increases of 30 percent or more. Small businesses, schools and families of all income levels would feel the pinch, but our senior citizens and lower-income families would be hurt the worst.
Almost half of all American households on average get by on less than $25,000 a year and spend 17 percent of their income on energy. A dramatic spike in the cost of electricity will be devastating, especially now when most families are living on less, thanks to the increasing cost of groceries and medical care over the last few years.

For all this economic pain, there will be essentially no environmental gain. Billed as a tool to fight climate change, the EPA’s carbon reduction scheme will only reduce average global temperatures by less than 0.02 degrees and hinder sea level rise by 0.01 inches – about the height of two stacked sheets of paper.

Our state needs its attorney general to fight against policies that put politics ahead of results and ignore the financial wellbeing of Granite Staters. New Hampshire residents need to remember Attorney General Foster’s support of the president’s plan when their future heating bills go through the roof.

(Rep. Victoria Sullivan, a Republican, lives in Manchester.)

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