MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said Thursday that he plans to launch a legal challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest decision to place stricter regulations on U.S. coal plants, which he says constitutes a direct threat to Alabama jobs.
“The Obama administration’s EPA ruling to cut carbon emissions at power plants is a direct affront to workers in states like Alabama which not only rely upon coal-fired plants to generate most of their electricity, but are also home to thousands of coal industry jobs,” Strange said. “Make no mistake, this ruling will cost us jobs and raise heating and cooling bills in Alabama.
“Because the Obama administration has gone around Congress to impose these punitive regulations, it has been left to state Attorneys General to challenge them in court. Since taking office, I have joined Attorneys General from other states in opposing burdensome EPA regulations on our coal industry as well as on energy providers. We were successful in overturning one such ruling in 2012 regarding cross-state air pollution and the Obama administration can expect another legal challenge to its latest intrusive and overreaching carbon emission regulation.”
The EPA ruling announced on Monday mandates the State of Alabama cut power plant carbon emissions by 27 percent by 2030. More than half of all the electricity Alabama Power generates in the state comes from coal-fired plants. Additionally, more than 16,000 Alabama jobs are dependent upon the coal industry, which has an estimated $1.3 billion economic impact on the state.
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The EPA will finalize its stricter standards in mid-2015. The agency will then give each state a year to design a plan to implement the new regulations. States will have the option to upgrade their existing coal-fired units and promote “renewable energy,” or abandon coal all together. If a state does not produce an implementation plan, the federal government can intervene and impose one on them.
Business groups and the coal industry are adamantly opposed to the new regulations, claiming they will be the realization of President Obama’s 2008 concession that his energy plan would cause energy rates to “necessarily skyrocket.”
A newly released study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce predicts the Obama administration’s environmental mandates will cost the United States more than 220,000 jobs over the next several years.
According to the study, the proposed regulations will have a disproportionate impact on southern states, where energy costs would jump by $6.6 billion per year over the next decade-and-a-half. The “East-South-Central” region of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky would see its GDP shrink by an estimated $2.2 billion and would lose 21,400 jobs as a result of the plan.
“The extremist agenda of the Obama administration is forcing unwarranted higher energy costs upon Americans and further threatening an already sluggish economic recovery,” Strange concluded. “I am reviewing this latest burdensome mandate and will pursue every legal option to stop it.”
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