PACE to Speak at EPA Listening Session

Tomorrow, PACE will attend the Environmental Protection Agency’s listening session in Atlanta on new carbon regulations. EPA is holding eleven such listening sessions in different cities to solicit public input regarding EPA’s methods to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants.

PACE will voice its concern that EPA new carbon regulations will raise electricity prices and endanger power reliability across the U.S. Of further concern is that EPA’s proposed regulation will offer little, or no, environmental benefit. PACE Associate Director John Grimes will deliver the organization’s official remarks.

“Even if EPA’s regulation results in the total shutdown of the U.S. coal-fired power fleet, that would decrease the world’s carbon by far less than one percent,” says PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “Rules that pose great cost with no real benefits are bad bargains for the American people.”

In Atlanta, PACE will remind EPA that heavy regulation of carbon has been a disaster in Europe and that the U.S. should not go down that dangerous path. Earlier this year, we wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Australia’s experiment with carbon regulation led that nation to the brink of disaster.

PACE will also point out that EPA’s schedule of listening sessions fails basic tests of prudence. For example, the agency’s schedule of listening sessions avoids most of the major coal-producing states. In fact, EPA will hold listening sessions in only two of the nation’s fifteen top coal-producing states.

“EPA’s new rule clearly targets the nation’s coal-fired power plants, which are an important backbone of the nation’s power grid,” explains PACE Associate Director John Grimes. “For the agency to avoid the nation’s major coal-producing states is both irresponsible and a clear indication that the EPA isn’t really interested in listening to those Americans hardest hit by the new rules.”