Tennessee Valley Authority, the United States’ largest public utility, announced on Thursday that it plans to close six coal-fired units in Alabama due in large part to the Obama administration’s economy-crushing environmental regulations.
Five units at the Colbert Fossil Plant in northwest Alabama will be closed. Another unit will be closed at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in northeast Alabama. Together the plants generate about 13 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, which is enough to supply approximately 880,000 homes.
TVA has spent over $5 billion on emissions controls at its fossil-fuel plants in an attempt to comply with increasing environmental regulations, but even that is apparently not enough to mollify the EPA and other enviro groups.
“Environmentalists were satisfied,” the Washington Post wrote as news of the closures broke. “Many of the plants were more than 50 years old, and under a consent decree between the TVA, four state governments and the Sierra Club, the authority was required to install additional pollution control equipment known as scrubbers or shut down the plants.”
In short, the required “green” upgrades were cost prohibitive. It’s unclear at this point just how many Alabama jobs will be lost from the subsequent plant closures.
The EPA recently released stringent limits on greenhouse gases produced by future power plants. The agency also plans to put out similar standards for existing plants next year, a move that threatens to permanently cripple the already ailing coal industry.
Electricity rates are likely to skyrocket because alternative energy technology has not yet become an economically viable option to replace the power generating capacity and cost effectiveness of coal.
Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-KY, blasted the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for trying to deliver a “one-two punch to eliminate coal as a source of electricity.” Coal still makes up just under 40 percent of the United States’ electricity generating capacity. In Whitfield’s home state, that percentage rises to 90.
Even Democrats are abandoning the radical environmentalist wing of their party. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, has teamed up with Rep. Whitfield to propose legislation that would keep the EPA from imposing new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions without Congress passing a law agreeing with the start date of such regulations.
But other Democrats have called the plan to curb EPA power “lunacy” because it limits the agency’s ability to save the planet from global warming.
Back in Alabama, we think it’s “lunacy” to destroy the economy in pursuit of an unattainable green energy pipe dream.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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