Manchin Warning on Coal Shutdowns: ‘Prices Will Soar and the Grid Will Fail’

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PJ Tattler:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) warned that the “alarming” number of coal plants shutting down due to EPA regulations portends a looming energy crisis.

The Government Accountability Office reported yesterday that “power companies now plan to retire a greater percentage of coal-fueled generating capacity and retrofit less capacity with environmental controls than the estimates GAO reported in July 2012.”

“About 13 percent of coal-fueled generating capacity—42,192 megawatts (MW)—has either been retired since 2012 or is planned for retirement by 2025, which exceeds the estimates of 2 to 12 percent of capacity that GAO reported in 2012.”

The GAO added that the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has only taken “initial steps” over the past two years to interact on the question of how EPA regulations could affect energy reliability.

Thirty-eight percent of plant closures were centered in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

“The number of coal-fired plants that are being forced to shut down is alarming, and I truly believe we are setting ourselves up for a major electric stability crisis in this country,” Manchin said in a statement.

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“Necessarily skyrocket”…. where have I heard that phrase?

People do not realize wind turbines and solar arrays cannot match the amount of electric power produced by coal-fired plants. Clean coal technology can reduce emissions to the level that rivals a power plant running on natural gas.

The North East is going to feel the brunt of this. Let those lefties freeze for the 2015 winter and shut off their air conditioning for the summer of 2016 and see how they vote!

Randy, they will vote “D.”

It’s in the “DNA.”

Rolling brownouts in SoCal today.
330,000 at a time.
When one Boyle Heights community was included the Hispanic kids filled up a gigantic above ground pool to keep cool…..during an historic drought while fires burn down over 120 homes due to lack of water!

We had a summer snowstorm that knocked out power to 30 k Calgarians. I guess that’s one way to reduce coal fire electrical production. Yes, we have had summer snowstorms before.