Saturday, May 23, 2015

Carbon Capture Unnecessary

The EPA myth of “Clean Power” Posted on May 21, 2015 Written by Alan Caruba, cfact.org
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There are many things I do not like about the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, but what angers me most are the lies that stream forth from it to jus­tify pro­grams that have no basis in fact or sci­ence and which threaten the econ­omy.
Cur­rently, its “Clean Power” plan is gen­er­at­ing its lat­est and most duplic­i­tous Admin­is­ter (sic), Gina McCarthy, to go around say­ing that it will not be costly, nor cost jobs. “Clean Power” is the name given to the EPA pol­icy to reduce over­all U.S. car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions by 30% from 2005 lev­els by 2030. It is requir­ing each state to cut its emis­sions by vary­ing amounts using a base­line estab­lished by the EPA.
Sim­ply said, there is no need what­ever to reduce CO2 emis­sions. Car­bon diox­ide is not “a pol­lu­tant” as the EPA claims. It is, along with oxy­gen for all liv­ing crea­tures, vital to the growth of all veg­e­ta­tion. The more CO2 the bet­ter crops yields will occur, health­ier forests, and greener lawns. From a purely sci­en­tific point of view, it is absurd to reduce emissions.
Writ­ing in The Wall Street Jour­nal on April 22, Ken­neth C. Hill, Direc­tor of the Ten­nessee Reg­u­la­tory Author­ity, said “Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) set off a firestorm when he advised states not to com­ply with the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as rad­i­cal as his detrac­tors make it sound. As a state pub­lic util­i­ties com­mis­sioner who deals with the effects of fed­eral reg­u­la­tions on a reg­u­lar basis, I also rec­om­mend that states not comply.”
Not­ing its final due date in June, that refusal would impose a Fed­eral Imple­men­ta­tion Plan on states “that risks even greater harm,” said Hill. “But the prob­lem for the EPA is that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment lacks the legal author­ity under either the Con­sti­tu­tion or the Clean Air Act to enforce most of the regulation’s ‘build­ing blocks’ with­out states’ acquiescence.”
As this is being writ­ten, there are two joined cases before the D.C. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, State of West Vir­ginia v. EPA and Mur­ray Energy v. EPA. They are a chal­lenge to Pres­i­dent Obama’s “War on Coal” and the EPA efforts to reg­u­late its use. Fif­teen states, along with select coal com­pa­nies, have sued for an “extra­or­di­nary whit” (writ) to pre­vent the EPA from pro­mul­gat­ing the new car­bon reg­u­la­tions found it the Clean Power plan.
Writ­ing in The Hill, Richard O. Faulk, an attor­ney and senior direc­tor for Energy Nat­ural Resources and the Envi­ron­ment for the Law and Eco­nom­ics Cen­ter at George Mason Uni­ver­sity, noted that “The EPA’s argu­ment con­fi­dently hinges on con­vinc­ing the courts that the Clean Air Act doesn’t mean what it says. By its plain lan­guage, the bill pro­hibits the EPA from reg­u­lat­ing the power plants from which these emis­sions derive. More­over, coal plants are already addressed under an entirely dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the bill than the one EPA insists jus­ti­fies its powers.”
The lat­est news, as reported by Myron Ebell, the direc­tor for energy and envi­ron­ment of the Com­pet­i­tive Enter­prise Insti­tute, is that “Sen­a­tor Shel­ley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) this week intro­duced a bill to block the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s pro­posed rules to reg­u­late green­house gas emis­sions from new and exist­ing power plants. S. 1324, the Afford­able Reli­able Energy Now Act, has 26 orig­i­nal co-sponsors, includ­ing Major­ity Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen­ate Envi­ron­men­tal and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee Chair­man James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Demo­c­rat Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).”
“Both Major­ity Leader McConnell and Chair­man Inhofe have said that they are deter­mined to stop the EPA’s green­house gas rules, so I expect quick action to move Capito’s bill.  In the House, a bill to block the rules, H. R. 2042, the Ratepayer Pro­tec­tion Act, was voted out of the House Energy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee on 29th April and is await­ing floor action.”
It’s worth not­ing that, when Obama took office, 50% of America’s elec­tri­cal energy was sup­plied by coal-fired plants and, just 6 years later, that has been reduced by 10%. What kind of Pres­i­dent would delib­er­ately reduce American’s access to afford­able power?
It’s the same kind of Pres­i­dent that believes—or says he does—the pro­nounce­ments of the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Panel on Cli­mate Change. The IPCC’s “Cli­mate Change 2014 Syn­the­sis Report” claims that world will face “severe, per­va­sive, and irre­versible dam­age” if coal-fired and other carbon-based—coal, oil, and nat­ural gas—energy sources are not replaced with “renew­able energy sources”—wind and solar—by 2050. It wants fossil-fueled power gen­er­a­tion “phased out almost entirely by 2100.”  Now this is just insan­ity, unless your agenda is to destroy the world’s eco­nomic sys­tem and kill mil­lions. That would be the only out­come of the IPCC recommendations.
The colum­nist Larry Bell, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Hous­ton, points out that, “As for expect­ing renew­ables to fill in the power curve, Euro­pean Union expe­ri­ences offer a painful real­ity check. Approx­i­mately 7.8% of Germany’s elec­tric­ity comes from wind, 4.5% from solar. Large (sic) as a result, Ger­man house­holds already fork out for the sec­ond high­est power costs in Europe—often as much as 30% above the lev­els seen in other Euro­pean coun­tries. Power inter­rup­tions add to buyer’s remorse.”
As reported in The Heart­land Institute’s Envi­ron­ment & Cli­mate News, “Euro­pean gov­ern­ments, once at the van­guard of renew­able energy man­dates, appear to be hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about their reliance on giant wind farms…” There has been a sharp drop in such projects with instal­la­tions plung­ing 90% in Den­mark, 75% in Italy, and 84% in Spain.
What the EPA is attempt­ing to impose on Amer­ica is a drain on our pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­ity cou­pled with an increase in its price. It is an obscene attack on our economy. 
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