Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would roll back the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas emissions standards on power plants. That’s great news for consumers, who will suffer from widespread blackouts and billions of dollars in costs if the rules are not repealed.
The Biden administration’s rules, finalized in May 2024, would subject millions of people to rolling blackouts by effectively forcing reliable coal plants to retire and erecting impediments to building the new natural gas plants needed to replace them reliably.
Under Biden’s rules, coal and new natural gas plants would be forced to spend billions of dollars installing unproven carbon capture and sequestration technology to capture 90% of their emissions or shut down by 2039. Almost all coal plant owners would rather close up shop than undertake such high compliance costs. As a result, the rules would make America’s electric grid dangerously dependent upon unreliable wind, solar, and battery storage technologies.
There couldn’t be a worse time to retire reliable power plants. The North American Electric Reliability Council warned in 2024 that one regional grid is at risk of blackouts in “normal peak demand” conditions in 2025 and beyond, and more could expect them in the near future.
