Let’s assume this sudden effluence of people worried about negative economic impacts on the state are genuine. Well, even if they aren’t, there are significance reasons — among them, economic ones — to oppose the federal imposition of the Obama administration’s so-called “Clean Power Plan.”
As I wrote earlier this year:
The proposed regulations would:
- impose at least $366 billion in costs
- hit residents in 43 states with double-digit percentage increases in their electricity bills
- cost consumers and businesses $41 billion to $73 billion or more for electricity per year
- prematurely shutter 45,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity — more than New England’s entire electric generating capacity — and as much as 169,000 megawatts if the EPA cannot legally allow all options it specified for compliance.
- shut down 68,000 megawatts of fossil fuel electric generating capacity
- lead to widespread rotating blackouts in parts of the country
But the benefits … what would the offsetting benefits be? This:
- the Clean Power Plan would only reduce temperatures by 0.018 degrees Celsius by 2100
For whatever reason, the state’s elected Attorney General, Roy Cooper, has declined to represent the state’s interest in this matter, too. Department of Environmental Quality lawyers are pulling the freight in his absence.
