Way to go Mr. President!
In his campaign, President Trump promised to West Virginia to revive the struggling coal industry.
In 2017, he killed many coal mining regulations.
Take a look:
Now he's kicking it up a notch, killing another disastrous set of Obama regulations.
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Here's more on the story, from The Daily Caller:
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to give the coal industry a boost by rolling back another Obama-era environmental regulation.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday is expected to rescind a rule that requires new coal plants to be fitted with carbon capture technology, according to several officials who spoke with The New York Times. Under the Obama-era mandate, new coal plants were not allowed to emit more than 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. The Trump administration is due to raise this 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 administration’s mumblings of the rule rescission.
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 steady decline in recent years. Cheap natural gas and subsidy-backed renewables are increasingly rendering coal-fired plants unprofitable.
Throughout the first year of Trump’s presidency, a total of 27 coal facilities announced early closure or conversion. Plant retirements took place at an even faster rate in 2018, with a grand total of 14.3 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity shutting down. Analysts predict the pace of coal plant retirements will continue for at least another 10 years.
Trump — who campaigned on reviving coal country — has taken unprecedented steps to try and breathe life back into the industry.
The president embarked on an ambitious energy agenda since entering office in 2017, rolling back numerous Obama-era regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, Waters of the United States, vehicle emission standards, and he notably withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Additionally, the Energy Department has twice considered a federal bailout plan for at-risk coal and nuclear plants.
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Reuters confirmed the story:
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed rolling back an Obama-era rule requiring new U.S. coal plants to slash carbon emissions, a move that could crack open the door in coming years for new plants fired by the fossil fuel.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, announced the proposal. It would allow new coal plants to emit up to 1,900 pounds (862 kg) of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity, up from 1,400 pounds now.The move to revive the ailing coal industry, whose share in the U.S. energy mix has been in decline, caused an uproar among environmental groups, who said it ignored dire warnings from the world’s scientists about climate change.
“We are rescinding unfair burdens on American energy providers and leveling the playing field so that new energy technologies can be part of America’s future,” Wheeler said at a press conference. He spoke alongside Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, a long-time opponent of former President Barack Obama’s limits on carbon emissions.
The EPA hopes to finalize the rule after a public comment period.
"This proposal is another illegal attempt by the Trump administration to prop up an industry already buckling under the powerful force of the free market,” said U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee.
Under the existing Obama-era rule, new coal plants would have to burn some natural gas, which emits less carbon, or install carbon capture equipment or highly efficient technology that is not yet commercially available.
Wheeler argued the proposal would not boost U.S. greenhouse emissions but would actually help drive them down by encouraging U.S. investment in new energy technologies, which could then be exported.
“I’d love to see coal plants being built in China and India meet our standards,” he said.
The announcement came ahead of annual U.N. climate talks in Poland next week, where White House officials plan a panel on coal technology.
A U.S. Government report last month found climate change will cost the national economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century. That bleak picture clashes with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil-fuels agenda.
“We are not ignoring the government report,” Wheeler said. But he added “a lot of the media’s focused on is the worst-case scenario.”
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