Columbus, OH – In public comments filed on Thursday, The Buckeye Institute urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ensure Americans have access to reliable energy sources and repeal its impractical emission standards for new and existing power plants. The repeal is a “necessary correction and prudent policy response” to the growing demand and increasing costs of energy.

In its comments, The Buckeye Institute: 1) outlines how the EPA’s unworkable emission standards threaten the availability of reliable and affordable electricity, and 2) corrects the EPA’s flawed Regulatory Impact Analysis and offers an analysis that is grounded in feasibility, measurable outcomes, and realistic compliance outcomes. 

Meeting Growing Energy Demands
As demand grows, the energy mix the EPA is pushing cannot deliver the reliable, affordable electricity Americans need. Existing emission standards and unproven carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) requirements “systematically push utilities away from reliable, dispatchable power” toward less reliable renewables, which face fewer regulations and receive billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. 

Correcting Regulatory Impact Analysis
The EPA estimates compliance with current emission standards will cost $19 billion, which stems from mandates requiring power plants to “install and operate 90 percent CCS systems,” a system the EPA itself has deemed “technically infeasible and economically unjustified.” Moreover, the EPA understates compliance costs by “ignoring the broader burden on consumers and the economy.” A more accurate regulatory impact analysis—which The Buckeye Institute outlines—based on “feasibility, verifiable results, and transparent accounting,” demonstrates that repeal of the current emission standards would provide a “positive net benefit” and  avoid “unjustifiable compliance costs.”

Aswin Prabhakar and Sai C. Martha, both economic research analysts at The Buckeye Institute, authored the comments.

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