The Post:
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions
from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people
briefed on the proposal. The move could end the construction of
conventional coal-fired facilities in the United States.
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the
White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to
emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of
electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits
800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Actually there aren't any coal-fired power plants being built
anyway, because natural gas is cheap, nobody wants a coal-fired plant built near his house, and power company executives figured that a rule like this was coming eventually. And the rule will have no effect on existing coal-fired plants, some of which will last for decades. But it begins the phase out of coal power in America.
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