By Emily Arthun
May 21, 2024
The Biden administration's war on coal recently emerged from the shadows with the release of a series of new regulations whose clear intention is to close millions of acres of federal land to coal mining and oil and natural gas production and to shut down the country's remaining coal-fired power plants.
The Bureau of Land Management has issued a new rule that will make it virtually impossible to continue mining coal or drilling for oil and gas on federal lands. This will cripple coal mining in the Powder River Basin and other western deposits that provide the majority of the nation's coal used for energy production. This measure alone would have been devastating, but it was only part of a much larger and more far-reaching set of regulatory actions.
The new regulations were a last-minute attack, issued literally days before the deadline for a new president to reverse the decision by executive order. After that announcement, any reversal must be done by action by both houses of Congress or through a court case.
These actions come despite strong warnings from some utility regulators under the Biden administration that closing more baseload capacity (such as coal-fired power plants) could cause the nation's power grid to fail.
The new rules make it virtually impossible for utilities to continue operating coal-fired power plants without investing in new, largely commercially unproven and very expensive carbon capture technologies that could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 95 percent. The same applies to all new plants that use natural gas, but existing natural gas plants would be exempt from this requirement.
Make no mistake, this new set of regulations has one goal: to force the shutdown of the nation's coal-fired power plants, depriving them of much of their fuel source and making it economically impossible for these plants to continue operating. These measures are not a panacea; they will have ripple effects throughout the economy. They will drive up the already staggering electric bills for millions of American families to unaffordable levels, forcing them to choose between putting food on the table and heating and cooling their homes. Many people on fixed incomes, like retirees living on welfare, will be hit hardest.
And even if you can afford electricity, it may not be there when you need it most. Further shutdowns of baseload generation could (and probably will) push the grid over the limit just when it needs electricity most – in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. This would lead to de facto energy rationing and would also impact the rest of the economy, driving up inflation even further and putting many companies out of business.
Frankly, I don't understand this “to hell with the torpedoes, full speed ahead” approach to regulation. It seems as though the only thing that matters to the Biden administration is loyalty to a radical green agenda, and the needs of average American families aren't even on the radar.
America needs easy access to reliable and affordable energy. That's what this great nation was built on. There's no shortage of coal. There's no shortage of gas or oil. However, this administration seems to lack common sense.
Rather than harnessing our vast resources of coal, oil and gas, the Biden administration appears to be committed economic suicide. Over the next few decades, demand for electricity is expected to skyrocket. How are we going to meet that demand if this administration continues to recklessly chase a green fairytale?
Emily Arthun is President and CEO of the American Coal Council based in Washington, DC
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available through RealClearWire.
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