New Climate Rule for Pollution “Terminal” For Coal-Fired Plants

(AmericanProsperity.com) – A new climate rule imposed by the Biden administration requires large cuts in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, but this could mean that the coal-fired power industry is no more.

Coal has been the backbone of the United States economy, acting as the main power supply for years, but it’s being driven out by renewables and gasses. On top of this, they are now facing an Environmental Agency regulation that would demand that all coal plants that aren’t retiring by 2039 cut their carbon emissions by ninety percent within the next decade.

This new regulation is being called “probably terminal” for these coal-fired power plants that are not planning on closing down. An analyst from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said that only a “handful of plants” will make it past 2030.

“Not many plants will be able to cut their pollution that much and fewer still will survive the energy transition past 2040,” Seth Feaster, the analyst, said. “You’ll probably be able to count them on one hand.”

Coal is the worst and dirtiest of all fossil fuels regarding their planet-heating emissions, and it accounts for more than half of carbon pollution coming from the power sector. As newer energy sources gain momentum, like solar and wind energy, they also begin to gain more shares within the energy sector.

The United States has pledged to cut all emissions by 2035. To do this, coal-fired plants will have the ability to adopt a technology that would allow them to operate as normal but by using carbon capture and storage as an emissions-safe alternative.

With this, many say that many of these plants will be over seventy years old, so they most likely will just shut down instead of spending a billion dollars to implement new carbon capture and storage technology.

Scientists have pushed the idea of getting rid of coal and other fossil fuels to avoid worsening climate change effects. This has spiked the opinions of countries across the world on their plans to slash emissions and become more climate-friendly.