May 25, 2016

Why are a growing number of states – 29 at last count – challenging EPA’s costly power plan? Because they’re persuaded by a growing number of authorities, some from the Obama administration, of just how costly it will be.

The latest to forecast the pain from EPA’s rule is none other than the Energy Information Administration. In its 2016 Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), the agency that has forgotten more about energy economics than EPA will ever know confirms the CPP will not only raise electricity rates but unemployment, too. Thanks to the rule’s major impact on coal production, and an expected $60 billion drop in GDP, the nation will have about 375,000 fewer jobs in 2030 than it would have without the rule. Jobs, by the way, that pay an average annual wage of $87,300 with good benefits.

This will be news to EPA’s administrator, who recently dropped jaws saying she “can’t find one single bit of evidence that we have destroyed an industry or significantly impacted jobs …” To find, you must first look.

Any remaining doubts should be relieved by the testimony this week from the Obama administration’s former Department of Energy fossil fuel director, Charles McConnell. Now executive director of Rice University’s Energy and Environment Initiative, McConnell will tell a House panel tomorrow that EPA’s chief climate change plan is “ideological mumbo jumbo” that will not significantly affect global CO2 emissions. McConnell told E&E News he is “not against climate regulations … but I am against stupid regulations.”

Thanks to the Supreme Court, governors are already relieved of any legal obligation to comply with a rule likely to be judged unlawful anyway. Now the administration’s own energy experts are giving them more reasons to put their pencils down.