EPA initiatives give new meaning to political gridlock

July 24, 2015
Bad energy policy has one positive attribute: a strong tendency for mistakes to devour themselves.

Bad energy policy has one positive attribute: a strong tendency for mistakes to devour themselves.

At the US Environmental Protection Agency, that historically prolific manufacturer of energy mistakes, a predictable reckoning might be especially thorough.

EPA soon will publish final rules on its Clean Power Plan capping emissions of greenhouse gases from existing and future generators fueled by fossil energy.

The dominant public response so far, to the extent one exists, is the cuddly supposition that EPA is acting against deleterious climate change.

That view will change when effects become more than press-release projections from groups dismissed now as special interests.

NERA Economic Consulting expects electricity prices in the US to increase by an average 12-17%. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. has warned of grid-reliability problems.

To a citizenry increasingly dependent on electronic convenience, such outcomes would not inspire cheery thoughts about the elected leadership. Politics will require change.

Meanwhile, EPA proposes a new standard for ground-level ozone that will place an estimated 331 counties out of compliance, atop 227 counties in violation of a standard set in 2008. In some areas, the proposed standard is below background ozone levels.

Costs of meeting the toughened standards will be high. And EPA will be able to withhold federal transportation funding in noncompliant areas.

Herein resides the extra self-correction mechanism.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, failure by the Washington, DC, region to meet ozone standards would jeopardize $511 million in funding for 13 area transportation projects in fiscal 2019 and 2020.

The work includes a streetcar, railway capacity expansion, highway interchanges, and other plans addressing what the institute calls “some of the worst traffic conditions in the country.”

About the time Americans everywhere are experiencing brownouts and diminishingly affordable electricity, therefore, Washington, DC, will become gridlocked.

So demands will consolidate for politically induced rationalization. And the unbridled regulators who caused it all will be—to everyone’s benefit—stuck in traffic.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted July 24, 2015; author’s e-mail: [email protected])