Battle Heats Up Over EPA’s Proposed New Regulation of Electric Generating Plants

by Douglas Gregory
August 30, 2011

On May 3, 2011, the EPA published New Source Performance Standards [NSPS] in the Federal Register. Edison Electric Institute expects the NSPS will cost the utilities industry $129 billion and eliminate 9% of total U.S. power production.

Washington Post blogger Brad Plumer waxed rhapsodic over a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report that he believes shows benefits will far outweigh costs. But the CRS report is far more optimistic than industry expectations about costs and benefits of multiple new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coal power regulations.

More important, the CRS report flies in the face of a far more expert analysis by Dr. Anne E. Smith’s Technical Comments on the Regulatory Impact Analysis Supporting EPA’s Proposed Rule for Utility MACT and Revised NSPS. Smith—an expert on risk analysis and economic forecasting—concludes, on the basis of detailed analysis, that EPA’s claims of benefits exceeding costs “lack credibility,” “stretch the bounds of plausibility,” and are “just not credible.” She adds that implementing the rule would cause “a net loss of $10.9 billion per year.”

The EPA's 262-page report projects benefits ranging from a high of $140 billion ($11 billion above Edison’s cost estimate) to a low of $53 billion ($76 billion below Edison’s cost estimate). But it is unlikely the EPA’s claimed benefits would occur at all.

As Smith shows, the EPA’s benefit claims are overstated in scope and include unproven benefits plus some that, real or not, can’t even be attributed to the new rules, e.g.:

“EPA’s estimates of the direct benefits due to reduction of the air toxics … range from only $0.0005 billion [$500,000] to $0.006 billion [$6 million] per year—less than .01% of EPA’s total benefits estimate … due to reduction of just one of the [Hazardous Air Pollutants], mercury.” Consequently, …
“Although EPA reports that the Proposed Rule will produce annual benefits ranging from $53 billion to $140 billion, these benefits have nothing to do with air toxics at all.” [emphasis original]
“Effectively all of the $53 billion to $140 billion of estimated benefits is due to ‘co-benefits’ from coincidental reductions of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a pollutant … independently regulated under the Clean Air Act (CAA) as a criteria pollutant.” In other words, these benefits would come anyway, without the new rule.
“[First look] evidence of the non-credibility of EPA’s co-benefits estimates exists in EPA’s baseline estimates of risk in this RIA: deaths that were ‘due to’ ambient PM2.5 exposures exceeded 20% in areas of the US in 2005 ... [and] over 40% of deaths were [supposedly] due to PM2.5 in parts of the US during the period 1979-1983. These surprisingly high assumptions about baseline risk, which … stretch the bounds of plausibility, are the result of a single assumption change in 2009 in EPA’s RIAs [Regulatory Impact Analyses] to extrapolate risks below the ambient PM2.5 levels that have been studied, to as low as background (i.e., nearly zero).”

Many of the regulated “air toxics” and pollutants have never been shown to have a direct effect on health. Mercury, the only one that is actually toxic as an “air toxic,” has no correlation to methylmercury levels in fish—reductions in which the EPA claims as a benefit of the new regulation. Three separate studies have demonstrated that mercury pollution from coal and oil-fired power plants has no effect on methylmercury in fish.

In short, the EPA cherry-picks costs and benefits in its own favor. Contrary to its claims, costs of its new rules are likely to far outweigh benefits.

Douglas Gregory is Research and Communications Specialist for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He earned a B.S. in Microbiology from The Pennsylvania State University.

Children are a Heritage from the Lord: A Biblical Perspective on Population

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, discusses the blessings of children. Children are the LORD's inheritance, the beginning of a legacy, and the primary means of building God's church. Thomas Malthus, and many since including Paul Ehrlich, have stated that the earth has a population limit; therefore, our children are an ever increasing tax on the earth's fragile and limited resources. The earth is meant to be cultivated and populated by the people.

Recent Significant Developments

Science & Ecology

Science Getting Settled (Lawrence Solomon; Financial Post)
New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun—not humans
The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun—not human activities—as the dominant controller of climate on Earth

The Hi-Tech Agriculture Imperative (Douglas Nelson and Alexander Rinkus; The American)
The last two centuries have seen an increase in crop-production technology to such an extent that in the developed world we give away food with enough calories to stave off starvation for days (e.g. free pizza give-away for joining a club). This technology can easily be exported to the developing world, but if and only if free-trade and plant-science technology are adequately taken advantage of.

Global Coal Consumption Jumps Almost 50% – Yet Global Temps Drop! (P Gosselin; NoTricksZone)
Coal consumption has increased 50% over the last decade, 90% of which is China and India's increased demand. If the alarmists are right we would expect to see an increase in global temperature, but we have actually observed a slight decrease in global temperatures!

CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Ray Action (Nigel Calder; Calder's Updates)
CERN scientist Jasper Kirby demonstrates the necessity (and benefit) of aerosols and cosmic rays to climate regulation. The story brings renewed interest to Danish heretical scientist Henrik Svensmark's hypothesis that 20th century climate change is almost entirely solar in origin. Nigel Calder aptly states: " 'It’s the Sun, stupid!' The story isn’t really about a bunch of naughty Danish physicists. They are just spokesmen for the most luminous agent of climate change."

Economics & Energy

Government Report Confirms that Federal Energy-Related Subsidies Have Increased 108 Percent in 3 Years; Wind Subsidies Increased 10-fold (Institute for Energy Research)
“The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a research and data analysis arm of the Department of Energy, has released a report that details the amount of taxpayer subsidies that were distributed to energy producers in 2010. The federal government handed out $37.2 billion to energy producers in 2010, an increase of 108 percent from the $17.9 billion doled out in 2007.” Wind got $4.9 billion for its 0.5% of total US energy; oil, coal, and natural gas got a combined $4.1 billion for its 78% of total US energy. I.e., wind, $9.8 billion per percent of total production; fossil fuels, $0.05 billion per percent of total US energy. Wind’s subsidy rate is 196 times higher than oil, gas, and coal’s combined.

Campaign Advice for "All of the Abovers" (David Schnare; The Washington Times)
Don’t be fooled. “All of the above” energy policy = mandates and subsidies for inefficient, expensive, environmentally harmful “Green” energy; higher rates to consumers; lower dependability of America’s energy infrastructure; and consequently increased human suffering.

Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises (Aaron Glantz; The New York Times)
“In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream. … A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.” And this report is in The New York Times, amazingly enough!

Religion & Ethics

Has Progressivism Ruined Environmental Science? (Anthony Sadar; American Thinker)
Anthony J. Sadar: government scientist, industry consultant, and academician in the field of air-pollution meteorology quickly discusses the major biases promoted by "Gaian" climate scientists and their adoring media outlets. In short, they spit in the face of true scientific progress.

Law, Regulation, & Litigation

American Tradition Institute Sues Colorado Over Renewable Energy Standard
April 4, 2011, American Tradition Institute ... sued the State of Colorado and several officials over the constitutionality of the state's Renewable Energy Standard [RES] mandate. The RES requires the state's major utilities to obtain 30 percent of their power generation from "renewable" sources by the year 2020.

ATI claims that the Colorado RES discriminates... against legal, safer, less costly, less polluting and more reliable... generators of electricity sold in interstate commerce. This discrimination is forbidden by the Commerce Clause.

American Tradition Institute Colorado Lawsuit, Part 1 - Pollution Issues Dr. David Schnare explains why wind energy on the electrical grid creates more pollution than it saves.
Part 2 - Constitutionality Schnare explains why the law is unconstitutional.
Part 3 - Possible Outcomes Schnare explains what the possible outcomes would be if ATI wins the lawsuit and renewable mandates are declared unconstitutional.

Politics & Debate

David Suzuki Insults, but Won't Debate (David Legates: Financial Post)
Ad hominem attacks, like those frequently raised against climate realists (“deniers”) usually can go unrebutted, since they’re fallacious anyway. But when Canadian hyper-alarmist David Suzuki attacked Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon recently, Soon’s friend U. Delaware Dr. David Legates fired back, solidly exonerating Soon and demonstrating that Suzuki’s attack would equally condemn all the alarmist researchers. Don’t miss this devastating piece.

Aliens vs. Humans: Eco-friendly ETs Could Wipe Out Polluted Planet Earth to Protect Their Civilisations, Warns NASA (Richard Hartley-Parkinson; Mail Online)
Let me be sure I've got this right: We should limit our growth to prevent rising GHG concentrations from tipping aliens off that we're growing lest our growing strength provoke a preemptive strike by the aliens. But wasn't GHG-caused AGW supposed to WEAKEN human civilization, not strengthen it? And of course, if rising GHG concentrations are the effect of growing strength, then limiting them means limiting our strength, which makes us more vulnerable to aliens if and when they come. This (tongue-in-cheek?) speculative article defeats itself coming and going. What a shame logic ceased being required in most high schools in America sometime around the 1950s.—ECB

Meet the Critics: Lord Christopher Monckton

National Religious Broadcasters' NRB Network Airs Resisting the Green Dragon
Selections from the Cornwall Alliance’s groundbreaking Resisting the Green Dragon video series are airing on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on the NRB Network, viewable over DirecTV’s Channel 378, Sky Angel’s Channel 126, and streaming live at http://www.nrbnetwork.tv/watchonline.

Order Resisting the Green Dragon for Church, School, or Small Group

More and more churches and other groups are using Cornwall Alliance’s groundbreaking 13-part video series around the country. With its printable discussion guide, it provides full curriculum for a Sunday school quarter. The accompanying book helps teachers and others dig deeper.

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Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

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