WASHINGTON, DC - Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) this afternoon kicked off debate on two resolutions that protect jobs and affordable and reliable energy from the Obama administration’s cap and trade scheme. S.J. Res 23 and S.J. Res 24 (identical to H.J. Res 71 and 72 authored by Whitfield) provide for Congressional disapproval of two final rules issued by the EPA for new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. The House is expected to vote on both resolutions later today.Today we will debate resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act for the two EPA rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing electric generating units. Each of these measures poses a serious risk to the nation’s electricity system, and combined they may well represent the biggest threat to our energy future. For the sake of affordable and reliable energy as well as jobs, I urge all my colleagues to vote in favor of disapproving these ill-advised rules.
I supported the bipartisan Congressional Review Act back in 1996 because I believed there needed to be a better way for Congress to fight back against unelected bureaucrats enacting major rules that are not in the public interest. But I must say that at the time I never imagined rules nearly as bad as the two we are discussing today. Taken together, they would create through regulation the cap-and-trade program that Congress wisely rejected and that has performed so poorly in Europe and everywhere else it has been tried. We begin with S.J. Res. 23 which would disapprove of EPA’s New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new electric generating units.
I am particularly concerned about this rule because it would serve as a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants. It would effectively require all such new plants to install carbon capture and storage (CCS) despite the fact that this technology is not commercially available. EPA insists that CCS has been adequately demonstrated, as the Clean Air Act requires, but most of the agency’s assertions have turned out to be highly problematic. At first, the agency relied heavily on experimental CCS projects supported by the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative, even though the law makes clear that such federally- supported experiments cannot be used as evidence of adequate demonstration. Later, the EPA shifted its focus to non-power CCS projects the agency holds out as success stories, but these projects do not translate to electricity generation. It is evident that CCS is not adequately demonstrated for power plants and therefore EPA’s rule will serve to block new coal-fired generation from being built.
EPA’s fallback argument is that no company would want to build a new coal plant anyway in this era of cheap natural gas. But we have seen time and again that energy markets fluctuate, and it is entirely possible, even likely, that new coal-fired capacity will again make economic sense, especially given its track record of affordability and reliability as well as the diversity coal adds to generation mix. And lest anyone get too complacent about natural gas saving the day, I would note that the many of the same environmental activists who targeted coal are now going after natural gas.
For these and other reasons, this rule has engendered a large and diverse group of critics, and my subcommittee has had the opportunity to hear many of them in our hearings on the rule and on H.R. 3826, the Electricity Security and Affordability Act. From legal scholars to power plant owners to manufacturers, we have had the chance to learn why this rule is as illegal as it is unworkable. We also heard from representatives of some of the 23 states challenging this rule in court.
I would conclude by noting that a resolution of disapproval does not leave a void. New coal fired power plants in the U.S. would still have to meet some of the toughest pollution control standards in the world. And EPA as well as states are free to come up with other, more workable regulations of greenhouse gases. For example, the Electricity Security and Affordability Act merely requires that any such measures meet the commonsense requirement of being achievable using commercially available technologies.
But we can’t get started on the right regulatory path until we get off the wrong one, and that is what S.J. Res. 23 would do. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this resolution of disapproval.
