CEI’s Myron Ebell appeared on E&E-TV this morning to discuss the upcoming vote on Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) CRA vote to end the EPA’s mercury and air toxic’s rule. You can watch the video here. Here is a snippet of the conversation:

Monica Trauzzi: Myron, the Senate is expected to take up a measure this month that would change the future of EPA’s mercury and air toxics rule. There are two proposals that are actually being discussed on the Hill right now and the first is by Senator Inhofe and that would scrap the rule entirely. The second is by Senators Alexander and Pryor, and that would give utilities a little extra time to comply with the rule. What’s your take on the proposals and the overall impact on industry?

Myron Ebell: Well, first, the House has already passed legislation with a quite significant majority to block the utility MACT rule. Senator Inhofe’s resolution is brought under the Congressional Review Act and, therefore, it only requires a majority of those voting and it cannot be blocked by the Majority Leader or require a 60 vote, procedural vote. So, his is actually doable in the Senate. The Alexander Pryor legislation, I think Senator Alexander, who we might think of as the next Dick Lugar, is trying to provide cover for Democrats in tough election races to say that they’re voting for something that has absolutely no chance of passage, because their bill would take 60 votes, whereas Senator Inhofe’s much better resolution, which would block the rule entirely, only takes 50. The Alexander-Pryor legislation would only delay the implementation by a couple of years. So, instead of giving utilities four years, they would have six years in order to shut down their coal-fired power plants essentially.

Monica Trauzzi: But isn’t that a good thing? I mean couldn’t that help industry if they had a little extra time to comply and apply some of these technologies?

Myron Ebell: Sure, it could, but the fact is that there is no technology that will help these coal-fired power plants comply. So, we’re just essentially extending the killing off of coal-fired power plants. This bill has no chance of passage. That’s the key thing. It’s only being introduced to try to peel votes off of the Inhofe resolution.

Monica Trauzzi: So, you’re talking about the Alexander-Pryor bill?

Myron Ebell: Yes, it has, it would require 60 votes and there aren’t, if there aren’t 50 votes for the Inhofe resolution, there certainly aren’t going to be 60 for the Alexander bill.

Watch the rest here, or read the entire transcript here.

File this one under regulatory trainwreck. NERA Economic Consulting has just published a study on the combined economic impacts of EPA’s Clean Air Transport (CATR) Rule and Utility Maximum Available Control Technology (MACT) Rule.

NERA estimates the rules will impose $184 billion in cumulative costs on the electricity sector, increase average U.S. electricity prices in 2016 by 12%, and reduce net U.S. employment by 1.4 million jobsduring 2013-2020.

“It is important to note that this report only covers CATR and Utility MACT,” comments Brandon Plank of the Republic Policy Committee. ”It does not include the costs of EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, New Source Performance Standards for refineries and utilities, ozone and particulate matter standards, reclassification of coal ash, etc.” (See chart below.)

Here is the NERA study’s summary of key results:

• Coal unit retirements would increase by about 48 GW
• Electricity sector costs would increase by $184 billion (present value over 2011-2030 in 2010$) or $17.8 billion per year
  • Includes coal unit compliance costs (including $72 billion in overnight capital costs), fuel price impacts, and costs of replacement energy and capacity
• Coal-fired generation in 2016 would decrease by about 13% and electricity sector coal demand in 2016 would decrease by about 10%
• Natural gas-fired generation in 2016 would increase by about 26% and Henry Hub natural gas prices 2016 would increase by about 17%
  • Increased natural gas prices would increase natural gas expenditures by residential, commercial, and industrial sectors by $85 billion (present value over 2011-2030 in 2010$) or $8.2 billion per year
• Average U.S. retail electricity prices in 2016 would increase by about 12%, with regional increases as much as about 24%
• Net employment in the U.S. would be reduced by more than 1.4 million job-years over the 2013 – 2020 period, with sector losses outnumbering sector gains by more than 4 to 1.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board last week penned a widely circulated thesis that “[t]he environment and public health will be thrown under a bus for the sake of his [President Barack Obama’s] reelection in 2012.” While I would love, love, love for this to be true, it isn’t; the L.A. Times editorial board’s contention that the president has abandoned greens to score political points is bunk.

In fact, this administration is waging a war on conventional energy supply and demand in this country, with very real repercussions for everyday Americans. Just ask the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, oil and gas drillers along the Gulf, or coal miners in Appalachia, all of whom have urged the Congress to roll back the president’s regulatory crackdown in an effort to protect their livelihoods.

To make its point, the L.A. Times editorial board cited two examples of the president supposedly abandoned his green base as a sop to industry. The first was the EPA’s decision last week to “indefinitely” delay the implementation of Maximum Achievable Control Technology retrofits on industrial boilers to control the emissions of hazardous air pollutants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. According to the L.A. Times editorial board:

The EPA indefinitely rescinded the proposal this week, citing Obama’s January executive order on regulations and claiming that the agency hadn’t had time to properly address industry concerns about the rule since a draft was released in September…. The economy is the top subject on Americans’ minds, and Obama no doubt figures he can blunt criticism of his regulatory record and maybe corral some independent voters by cutting smokestack industries a little slack. Never mind that the economic calculus doesn’t pencil out; according to EPA estimates, the rule on industrial boilers would cost polluters $1.4 billion a year, but the value of its health benefits would range from $22 billion to $54 billion. And never mind that the rule would prevent up to 6,500 premature deaths each year.

The L.A. Times editorial board made two errors in this passage. The first was to claim that the EPA acted to address industry concerns. To be sure, American industry is aghast at this administrations war on energy, but that wasn’t the reason that the EPA delayed the study. Rather, the EPA acted due to…opposition from within the Obama administration.

That’s right. This wasn’t the first time the EPA tried to delay the rule. It tried last January, after a still-unpublished Commerce Department study eviscerated the EPA’s economic analysis. Despite requests from Republican Members of Congress, the administration won’t release the study. So much for “transparency.”

The L.A. Times editorial board’s second error is related: It parroted the EPA’s ridiculous cost-benefit analysis, the same one that the Commerce Department blew out of the water. To get an idea of what the Commerce Department objected to, read this recent Competitive Enterprise Institute study by Garrett A. Vaughn, “Clearing the Air on the EPA’s False Regulatory Benefit-Cost Estimates and Its Anti-Carbon Agenda.”

The L.A. Times editorial board’s other example of President Obama supposedly forsaking environmentalists is the administration’s having put on the “slow track” new toxic rules for coal ash. OK…so the coal ash rule is on the “slow track”… I’ll grant that to the L.A. Times editorial board. But what about: the Hazardous Air Pollutant Utility MACT, Regional Haze, unprecedented greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, unprecedented tightening of all criteria pollutants for National Ambient Air Quality Standards, a potential re-interpretation of Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act to impose a 100-foot buffer rule, the creation of a new “pollutant,” salinity, under the Clean Water Act, and once-through cycling. Every single one of these “fast-track” regulations is targeted at either coal supply or coal demand. The L.A. Times editorial board can’t see the forest for the trees.

The L.A. Times’s whiny editorial evinces a character defect of the environmental movement as a whole. Namely, these green special interests are NEVER satisfied.

Consider this L.A. Times op-ed from last week, “The Wrong Sites for Solar,” in which two environmentalists argued that Obama administration’s push for solar power on federal lands is a bad idea, because it would defile a desert.

Or, note this recent L.A. Times story, about how the Sierra Club is demanding that California Governor Jerry Brown overhaul the State’s plan for a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme, so as to make it more onerous on what’s left of California’s industrial base.

They get solar power…but it’s not good enough, because it might prove inimical to a turtle in a desert wasteland. They get a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme… but it’s not good enough, because it wouldn’t chase away all of California’s “dirty” industry. There’s no winning with environmentalist special interests.

Thanks to the greens’ implacable nature, the energy industry in California is a total basket case, as I explain with Jeremy Lott in this American Spectator piece.