(National Sentinel) Winning: The perpetually triggered Left won’t much like it, but the Trump administration is preparing to rescind yet another Obama-era rule that the once-ailing coal industry will applaud, along with American consumers who should see cheaper energy prices in the near future.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday is scheduled to ditch a rule requiring new coal-fired power plants to be equipped with carbon capture technology, several officials told The New York Times.
The Obama regime implemented the mandate that new coal plants put out no more than 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of power generation. The Trump EPA is raising the limit to 1,900 pounds.
“It’s fantastic that the Trump EPA is repealing the Obama EPA’s ban on new coal-fired power plants,” JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy said in May when The Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively reported the administrations’ consideration of rescinding the rule.
The Daily Caller noted further:
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Established in 2015, the carbon capture rule was widely derided by industry representatives who argued it made the construction of new coal-fired plants essentially impossible.
The expensive and cumbersome technology to this day has not been implemented on a commercial scale.
While the rule change will make it easier to build new coal plants, it’s not immediately clear how much it will help the industry, which has witnessed a steady decline in recent years. Cheap natural gas and subsidy-backed renewables are increasingly rendering coal-fired plants unprofitable.
Coal-fired plants are closing at an increasing rate, with 27 announcing closer during the president’s first year and closure announcements coming at an even faster pace this year. Industry analysts have predicted that closures will continue at a fast clip for another decade.
But at least the option to build new coal plants is back on the table, which is a great thing for American energy production as our economy, thanks to POTUS Trump’s policies, is not simply on the mend but growing rapidly.
Options are always better, economically speaking.
As for POTUS Trump’s record in sacking Obama-era regulations, he ditched the Clean Power Plan, Waters of the United States and vehicle emission standards, and he notably withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.
The Obama administration’s war on coal in 45 seconds:
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