Perry County Board to go on record today opposing EPA's recent clean power plant plan

The Perry County Board of Commissioners today will go on record opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plant Plan. Thee will be a formal resolution and U.S. Congressman Bill Enyart is expected to have a representative at the meeting to answer questions about the plan and how it could affect coal-fired power plants in Illinois.

National Mining Association (NMA) President and CEO Hal Quinn and leaders of a broad industry coalition, the Partnership for a Better Energy Future, have called on the EPA to withdraw and rework the flawed rule.

"EPA's climate change proposal for existing plants is a complex web of implausible assumptions that will harm many sectors of the economy, not just the coal industry and its supply chain. It is nothing less than an attempt to entirely remake the nation's electricity grid," Quinn said. "Unfortunately, the EPA's assertion that it can accomplish this without inflicting substantial harm on grid reliability and the energy economy inspires little confidence. The agency underestimated by a factor of 10 the power generation that would be lost from its previous regulations. The resulting loss of generating capacity during the next severe winter could drive up wholesale electricity prices from between 24% to 55% in many regions of the country - and that is without any additional plant retirements that would result from the proposed climate rule.

"By ushering in higher energy costs, the rule will cost jobs, slow employment growth, raise utility bills for millions of households and weaken the reliability of the power grid already described by experts as being close to the edge. What we need now is for the EPA to give Americans a break and withdraw this rule before the agency breaks the power grid and does serious harm to our economy."