Quote of the Day:  
“If you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem”- EPA Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding

Regulatory cap-and-trade
With Congress and the American people rejecting cap-and-trade, the Obama Administration has employed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to achieve similar ends. Delaying job-killing regulations until after the November election, the EPA is currently sitting on numerous proposed rules sure to increase the cost of energy.

A recent report from Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) unearths thirteen EPA regulations likely to hit American consumers should President Obama be reelected.
 
Every single day until November 6, ATR will highlight a pending EPA regulation.

Greenhouse Gas Regulation: $300-400 billion per year
From the Inhofe Report:

Thus far, EPA has issued regulations governing permit programs and monitoring requirements. Earlier this year, EPA proposed the first source specific greenhouse gas regulations – emissions standards for new power plants. The proposal paints an ominous picture for rate payers: the requirements are so strict they virtually eliminate coal as a fuel option for future electric power generation. In a thinly veiled political move, the agency has put off finalizing the proposal until after the election. Similarly, EPA has punted on standards for existing power plants as well as refineries – standards which will further drive up electricity and gasoline prices. Once these regulations are in place, EPA will proceed to issue regulations, industry by industry, until virtually every aspect of the American economy is constrained by strict regulatory requirements and high energy prices.

Take for example, farms: under federal permitting requirements, sources (i.e. a farm whose aggregate emissions exceed CAA permitting thresholds) would be required to comply with costly permitting mandates and pay an annual fee for each ton of greenhouse gas emitted on an annual basis. Known as the “cow tax”, there would be a cost-per-animal outcome. EPA itself estimates that in its best case scenario, there will be over 37,000 farms and ranches subject to greenhouse gas permits at an average cost of $23,000 per permit annually, affecting over 90% of the livestock production in the United States.

This is just the start of the EPA obsession in trying to regulate every aspect of the country’s energy sector. According to the Inhofe Report, “under the Clean Air Act (CAA), churches, schools, restaurants, hospitals, and farms will eventually be regulated.”

Does your Senator want efficient, reliable energy?
Earlier this year the Senate voted to overturn one of the EPA’s most damaging regulations, the Utility MACT. If your Senator voted “Yes,” they wanted to repeal the Utility MACT; if they voted “Nay,” they voted to preserve the job-killing measure.  
 

Posted by Chris Prandoni on Thursday, October 25, 2012 11:16 AM EDT

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