The EPA’s Plan Will Hike Your Electricity Bill

A new analysis from NERA Economic Consulting projects Pennsylvania electricity bills will increase between 10 and 19 percent from 2022 to 2033a consequence of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan to reduce carbon emissions. In fact, all 47 states covered by the EPA's “Clean Power Plan” would experience rate increases, including double-digit hikes in 41 states.

The Clean Power Plan is really Cap and Trade in disguise with an enormous price tag. NERA estimates the plan's annual cost to be between $29 billion and $39 billion. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) notes it’s at least,

three times greater than the cost of EPA’s (proposed) Mercury and Air Toxics rule, to which the U.S. Supreme Court stated: ‘It is not rational…to impose billions of dollars in economic cost in return for a few dollars in … benefits'.

What’s the benefit of this costly regulation? IER explains:

Carbon dioxide emissions will decline by less than 1 percent and global temperatures by less than 0.02 degrees Celsius by 2100. Policymakers should know that this costliest of electric power regulations actually achieves meaningless progress towards the goal that EPA uses to justify it.

As we’ve pointed out here, the plan is an extension of the Obama administration’s “War on Coal” that threatens at least 13,000 good-paying jobs in Pennsylvania and thousands more throughout the nation’s energy sector.

In a piece entitled “Obama’s Appalachian Tragedy,” the Wall Street Journal reports,

Since 2009, 332 coal mines in West Virginia have been closed, and 9,733 jobs—roughly 35% of the industry’s total employment in the state—have been lost.

With such a high price tag and thousands of jobs at stake Pennsylvania shouldn’t rush to complete a state plan this spring but rather take the two year extension granted by the EPA.