For Immediate Release
December 21, 2011
“The utility MACT will mean more power in Lisa Jackson’s hands, less power for American families, and fewer jobs for American workers.” — IER President Tom Pyle
WASHINGTON DC — IER President Tom Pyle released the following statement today in response to the announcement by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that the agency would begin regulating mercury and air toxic emissions from power plants:
“In this season of good tidings, the Environmental Protection Agency has some bad news for American consumers and job seekers who are already experiencing record electricity prices and prolonged unemployment.
“The utility MACT will increase the cost of electricity for American families, and in some places where coal-fired generation is the prevailing source of power, the prices will necessarily skyrocket just like President Obama promised. It will result in the loss of jobs, both in places where power plants will close and among small businesses that employ more than 60 percent of our workforce.
“The increasingly politicized nature of environmental regulation under Administrator Jackson raises many questions about the validity of the agency’s cost-benefit analysis. EPA itself has said that the costs could be as high as $11 billion, and the benefits could be as low as $500,000 annually. Even then, the EPA has been double-counting benefits that are already happening because of other rules.
“The EPA wants the American public to think that the air we breathe will become increasingly toxic in the absence of this new rule. But hidden in the agency’s frenzy to coerce the market into expensive renewable energy and kill the coal industry is the fact that our air has already been getting cleaner, according to the EPA’s own studies.
“Finally, the utility MACT presents a credible threat to the reliability to our electricity grid and compromises our national security.
“The new EPA rule means more power in Lisa Jackson’s hands, less power for American consumers, and fewer jobs in one of the only sectors of our economy where job creation is happening.”
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