The Battle For Power (Part 2)

Barack Obama has made his position well know these past few years when it comes to coal fired power plants in the US. In the first part of this article which you can view here. We showed how the Obama administration is waging a war against the power companies and in the process is de-industrializing this country as other countries such as China and Mexico continue to build new power plants at a steady rate. Our economy is in shambles and Obama is doing his best to ensure it stays that way by crippling our basic infrastructure.

 



Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu has launched the next phase of the White House’s publicly stated agenda to bankrupt the coal industry via EPA regulations after announcing the prospect of “massive” coal plant closures even as Texas and other states suffer rolling blackouts as a result of maxed-out power plants that cannot cope with demand.

The Obama administration’s strict enforcement of draconian EPA regulations has led to new clean-burning coal-fired plants being mothballed and other existing ones being shut down, which has in turn led to Texas and other states becoming energy-dependent, leading to shortages and blackouts exacerbated by freezing temperatures.

Despite White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer’s brazen lie in claiming that the blackouts are solely a result of “mechanical failures,” the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that oversees the state’s power, confirmed this morning that the threat of blackouts was ongoing as a result of a “maxed out grid”.

This “maxed out grid” is a consequence of federally enforced EPA restrictions that have led to the delay, mothballing and closing down of coal-fired plants. In Texas, approval for the much-needed Las Brisas Energy Center has been delayed for 3 years as a result of EPA meddling in Texas’ energy policy.

A federal court ruling last month gave the EPA permission to proceed with greenhouse gas regulation in Texas, temporarily superseding Texas’ non-compliance with the new regulations which came into force on January 2. The White House’s claim that EPA regulations are not currently affecting Texas is a complete fabrication.

Now White House Energy Secretary Steven Chu has made it clear that “massive” amounts of coal-fired plants in the United States will be closed down over the next five to eight years.

“The EIA ( Energy Information Administration) predicts plants with 7.7 gigawatts of capacity will close by 2018. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based The Brattle Group, a consulting firm, said in December that 50 to 65 gigawatts of capacity may be closed by 2020 because of environmental regulations. Analysts at Zurich-based bank Credit Suisse Group AG said in September that about 60 gigawatts of coal capacity may be retired,” reports Newsmax.

“We’re going to see massive retirements within the next five, eight years,” Chu said at a renewable-energy conference in Washington yesterday.

“Smaller, older units” that burn coal “won’t be economic under new clean air standards,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Mining Association.

This means that the larger transnational energy companies with close Obama administration ties like General Electric, who have been given waivers for the EPA carbon restrictions, will see their competition eliminated and be given free reign to jack up prices even further by creating artificial scarcity.

Americans will be made to foot the bill as part of Obama’s publicly stated agenda to bankrupt the coal industry in the move towards a “green economy,” which has little to do with the environment and everything to do with hollowing out America’s industrial base so that the country may be more easily swallowed up by the “post-industrial revolution” that remains the goal of the global elite. source

The wider argument that the EPA is simply trying to implement reasonable measures to prevent “carbon pollution” is also a complete misnomer. Modern day clean burning coal-fired plants go to great lengths to remove all hazardous chemicals before any emissions leave the plant, through the use of sophisticated scrubbers and other techniques, to the point where the only emissions are water vapor and carbon dioxide. Watch the video below for a demonstration of these techniques.

My brother is a recently retired 20 year US Navy veteran who spent his entire career in the nuclear submarine force. He currently workes for a large power company in the midwest as reginal director overseeing multiple power plants. I decided to foward my research on to him, as I was interested to hear the opinion of someone who deals with the governments directly on this issue. The following is an exerpt from the letter I received back from him:

    The concept that the Obama administration is trying to drive smaller and older coal plants out of business is entirely accurate as is the other article that you sent me.  Coal is very abundant and a natural resource that is available and cost effective for the US.  As coal is phased out in favor of natural gas that will drive up the cost of power and supply and demand constraints on the natural gas supply will undoubtedly ripple into higher prices for natural gas across the board which will serve to drive the cost of power up even further. 

    The EPA and the Obama administration are making life very difficult for utilities that utilize coal as a fuel source for power generation. China continues to build and commission modern and efficient coal fired power plants as well as hydroelectric and nuclear as they modernize and we are stuck in a major rut of energy policy that is keeping us from moving forward in a direction that is best for the US consumers and the nation as a whole.  

There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Obama administration has deliberately pursued a policy of bankrupting the coal industry by means of crippling EPA regulations. Candidate Obama himself explicitly stated this objective during a January 2008 interview.

“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he stated.