EPA's green tyranny stifles America

Say goodbye to good jobs.

When carbon cap-and-trade legislation officially died in Congress last year, many environmentalists lamented defeat while coal and oil proponents celebrated victory. As a scientist who has been working in the environmental industry for decades, I found both reactions misguided. Subsequent events have -- I am sorry to say -- proven me right. Thanks to the most aggressive and radicalized Environmental Protection Agency in history, the Obama administration is strangling America's energy sector in the name of greenhouse gas reduction.
But then cap and trade was never really about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It was about raising revenue. The United States has long had multiple emission reduction programs in place, and these will continue to grow. Thirty-three states have Renewable Portfolio Standards programs, which force gradual declines in fossil fuel power generation. Some portions of the country have (or will have) regional trading programs in place. Energy conservation mandates abound.

All of these efforts, and many others, have been spectacularly successful. Recently released EPA data shows that America is back down to mid-1990s levels of emissions. On a per capita basis, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States declined by 16 percent over the last decade. That reduction is almost 50 percent better than what the 15 richest nations in Europe (the EU-15) achieved in the same time frame, even though Europe has had a cap-and-trade program in place.

So has the Obama administration or EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson seen fit to celebrate this remarkable achievement? Of course not. Obama and his EPA despise hydrocarbons in any form, be it oil, coal or natural gas. Under Jackson, the EPA has issued a plethora of new rules designed to ensure that: a) no new coal-fired power plants of any substantial size can ever be built again in the United States, and b) existing coal-fired plants will slowly be crushed under the weight of multiple, ludicrously stringent new regulations.

It's happening under Congress' nose, simply because the Clean Air Act mechanisms that the EPA is using to achieve these ends are too complex for most everyone on the Hill to understand. What do new clean air standards for nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide have to do with burning coal and greenhouse gas emissions, for example? Well, if you set those standards low enough, there is no way that a big, new coal-fired power plant can meet them, no matter how advanced the technology employed. Similarly, if the EPA develops complex and overly stringent new emissions standards of so-called "air toxics" from coal-fired power plants, new plants become untenable. All of this has happened and continues to happen.

These regulations come on top of EPA efforts to directly regulate emissions of greenhouse gas through the Clean Air Act and its permit processes. Beginning July 1, every new facility over a certain size will have to prove that it is "state of the art" when it comes to reducing emissions. Coal- and oil-fired plants need not apply, although some natural-gas-fired projects might sneak through.

In other words the EPA has effectively banned any substantial further use of the most abundant, cheap energy source available. No, it's not cap and trade, but the net effect on the nation's energy sector and energy prices is everything that most ardent cap and trade fan could have ever wished for.

Rich Trzupek is a chemist and principal consultant at Mostardi Platt Environmental. This piece was adapted from his Encounter Broadside "How the EPA's Green Tyranny is Stifling America." He wrote the forthcoming book "Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry" (Encounter Books).