National Mining Association (NMA) President and CEO Hal Quinn joined leaders of a broad industry coalition this morning to call on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw and rework the flawed rule it proposed for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. In the following statement, Quinn underscores the concerns that were expressed in a July 21 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy from the Partnership for a Better Energy Future, a diverse coalition representing more than 165 industries and 80 percent of the economy:
“EPA’s climate change proposal for existing plants is a complex web of implausible assumptions that will harm many sectors of the economy, not just the coal industry and its supply chain. It is nothing less than an attempt to entirely remake the nation’s electricity grid.
“Unfortunately, EPA’s assertion that it can accomplish this without inflicting substantial harm on grid reliability and the energy economy inspires little confidence. The agency underestimated by a factor of ten the power generation that would be lost from its previous regulations. The resulting loss of generating capacity during the next severe winter could drive up wholesale electricity prices from between 24 to 55 percent in many regions of the country – and that is without any additional plant retirements that would result from the proposed climate rule.
“By ushering in higher energy costs the rule will cost jobs, slow employment growth, raise utility bills for millions of households and weaken the reliability of the power grid already described by experts as being close to the edge.
“What we need now is for EPA to give Americans a break and withdraw this rule before the agency breaks the power grid and does serious harm to our economy.”