Obamas War on Coal has already taken a remarkable toll on coal-fired power plants in America.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago.
Its the result of an unprecedented regulatory assault on coal that will leave us all much poorer.
Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obamas most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices necessarily skyrocket.
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity almost all natural gas was $136 per megawatt. Thats eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.
Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015. Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.
These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.
House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) aptly explained: The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPAs destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices.
The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obamas War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.
The Senate will have a critical opportunity to do just that when it votes on stopping Obamas most expensive anti-coal regulation sometime in the next couple of weeks. The vote is on the Inhofe Resolution, S.J. Res 37, to overturn the so-called Utility MACT rule, which the EPA itself acknowledges is its most expensive rule ever.
This vote is protected from filibuster, and it will take just 51 votes to send a clear message to Obama that his War on Coal must end.
Of course, Obama could veto the resolution and keep the rule intact, although that would force him to take full political responsibility for the massive impending jump in electricity prices.
I have a form set up at www.WarOnCoal.com to make it easy to contact your senators on this crucial issue.
#1
In Penna. and Maryland I know of five coal power plants that have shutdown. Nothing to replace it. The power generated by the windmills in one section all goes to the University of Maryland. One plant has gone to NG in a nearby state. Very difficult to get permits to mine coal now also. Even well established mines. I have heard the Chinese are purchasing some mines and don't have to deal with all the red tape. That coal just goes to China.
#2
To put it into perspective, the Obama administration is closing an amount of coal generation capacity equal to the total amount of nuclear power generation in the US. This at a time when this administration is attempting to migrate transportation energy onto the grid by encouraging the adoption of electric cars.
This administration is worse than incompetent, it is malevolent. It is doing absolutely the worst possible things at the worst possible moments in order to maximize economic harm.
#6
West Va miners are so disillusioned, they elected a Texas felon in the primary...wait until massive inflation across the board hits when the printing presses grind to a halt...there won't be any rich to tax. Unprecedented times ahead, I fear, even worse than the Babylonian siege Lamented by Jeremiah, where women ate their own children.
#8
CF, China has a glut of commodities at this time. They are delaying orders now. Like Japan of the past they are very sensitive to their raw material needs. So their push has been to acquire ownership of productive areas of the world. I am certain that they have political clout especially with this administration. Wavers and so on.
#9
Thanks Dale. I have no doubt that the current administration would sell anything - even deposits which have been marked 'off limits'. Didn't Clinton mark some vast deposit 'off limits forever' as national land or something (Utah?).
President Barack Obama has been accused of risking America's national security for political gain by giving Hollywood filmmakers access to secret material on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Critics of Mr Obama from the Left also said it was astonishing that an administration that had prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous governments combined had been caught happily leaking to Hollywood allies
Documents released under freedom of information laws show that Mr Obama's defence department and CIA enthusiastically assisted Kathryn Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director, for her forthcoming film on the raid.
Mr Obama's administration even made available "a planner, operator and commander of SEAL Team Six", the elite Navy squad that killed bin Laden in May last year. The identities of Navy SEALS are a closely-kept secret.
The filmmakers were taken to a classified facility, whose name had to be redacted in the released documents, and were allowed to tour the CIA vaults, containing vast amounts of secret information. They were also shown the CIA's mock-up of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
At the time, Ms Bigelow's film, titled Zero Dark Thirty, was due to be released in October, later prompting accusations that it was timed to boost Mr Obama's prospects for re-election the following month.
#2
Maybe someone should start investigating Kathryn Bigelow for the next six or seven months. Have her standing by to testify daily as to who told her what, when, all the painful details. Then charge her with assembling and divulging classified information through her movie if she can't remember anything.
Then go keelhaul the poor sucker who decides to release all the classified information in a last-ditch attempt to thwart the investigation.
#5
The candidate who is in prison and who ran in the primary in W.VA either got (or polled at) about 40% of the vote. I don't think Obama is in such good shape going into this election. Seems like many have awakened except for the devout Kool-Ade drinkers. Wolfe has not spent any money campaigning.
#6
Rasmussen was on Fox News today...FWIW, he said if the Clown-in-chief stays at 50% approval rating he gets re-elected (I think bumbles is at 51% right now)...if he drops to 45% than Romney will be elected. Not sure how he came up w/that conclusion.
#7
I don't know about the Rasmussen figures and conclusions. The most recent SurveyUSA poll was in NC of 524 likely voters. SurveyUSA had the least error in the last election of all the pollsters. They asked the following question: If the Presidential election were held today for whom would you vote? Republican Mitt Romney? Or Democrat Barack Obama? 45% chose Romney, 44% chose Obama. The error was around 4%. Most polls query people with landlines. 25% of the likely voters have no landline; only a cell phone. This is a bias in all these polls. Obama won North Carolina in the last election. It looks like this election is a contest.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
