Obama’s EPA Cues $130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution by 2015

[Pirate Smile]

Obama’s EPA Cues $130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution by 2015



The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in January 2012. Opponents of the Obama administration’s “over-reaching” EPA say these are costly regulations. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of this rule will be $130 billion by 2015. But if that figure is correct, that’s good news for the US economy.

Because there is another way of looking at that $130 billion “expense”. One industry’s expense is another industry’s sales bonanza. For the coal industry’s balance sheet, it is an expense, but think about who is going to perform this $130 billion cleanup – fairies? Hardly. This is a job for real American industries.

In the most depressed economy since the Great Depression, a slew of US companies will be selling the clean energy solutions (and adding employees to manufacture them) as coal companies must begin a race to have the least polluting coal plants.
Why do they have to race each other? Simple. Cap and trade is a sort of a plutocrats’ sack race:

In January, all electricity plants that emit pollutants (solar and wind electricity won’t be affected) must begin trading emissions among themselves under the EPA ozone trading rule. The electricity plants that outcompete the dirty ones will be the beneficiaries.

Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/13hj9)
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/09/17/obamas-epa-cues-130-billion-race-to-cut-pollution-by-2015/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+IM-cleantechnica+(CleanTechnica)&utm_content=FaceBook

From the comments:

Bob_Wallace1 hour ago

We'll be hearing some squealing about the $130 billion and how America can't afford that sort of expense to clean up our grid. Let's put it in perspective...

Americans spend $27 billion each year on pizza.

Annually, Americans spend about $88.8 billion on tobacco products and another $97 billion on alcohol.

Each year we spend $313 billion for treatment of tobacco and alcohol related medical problems.

People in the US spend about $64 billion on illegal drugs.

Americans also spend $586.5 billion a year on gambling.

Americans spend about $450 billion a year on entertainment.


Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/13hj9)

[vaberella]

1. Great news! n/t

[backwoodsbob]

2. if this goes through I will lose my job

and you won't hear one word of complaint from me.

My only thought on this...lets steer some of those green jobs to central appalachia where the coal jobs are going to be lost

[Honeycombe8]

6. Those will be large sites of cleanup, won't they? With crews hired to clean

and hopefully restore those sites to ones that are not dangerous?

Then that land might be sold for OTHER businesses to use. Businesses who will need to hire employees?

All that takes time, though. I suspect it will hit an area hard for a few years. And new businesses may not come it at all.

[joshcryer]

3. Nice piece, and fantastic comment scrounging!

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. K & R

[alc]

5. possibly, but there are other possibilities

* green energy doesn't provide the 20% lost from coal - factories move overseas of face brown outs here

* green energy costs significantly more - factories move overseas for cost

* green energy doesn't succeed - EPA drops the requirements in order to keep factories here and looks like an overreaching, out-of-touch, agency and is attacked as an enemy of industry.


Green energy jobs have rarely come through as planned. If jobs are the main priority now, it isn't a good idea to hope that "this time will be different". "Jobs" is not everyone's main priority, which is part of the problem. The administration is approaching everything as "top priority" which leads to not making much progress on anything.

[jamieque]

7. Well...

That was before I figured out how to eliminate pollution completely from coal fire and oil fueled devices. There is also the fact I have figured out multiple ways to maximize the efficience of our current green energy supplies. Before you ask how let me just say that many of my ideas are quite simple to impliment because most of them use current off the shelf technologies that would be used in new and different ways then they are currently being used.

Imagine a world of no pollution, cheap unlimited energy and no more hunger or jobless issues. Yes, my ideas are THAT big. No, I am not kidding or making that up. The only problem is getting my ideas into the hands of the right people who will use them correctly. I think one great breakthrough will come from being able to recycle nuclear waste instead of just burying it like we have always done.

I am already working on a proposal for the president to read as well as few select other people I have been gathering info on. Let's hope I am successful because if I am then our pollution problem worldwide will be history.