Breaking: EPA Kills US Coal Plants | DeSmogBlog

Wow. A decision by the Environmental Protection Agency today has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated.
What this means is that 30 permits for new coal-fired power plants in the seven state directly regulated by the EPA's permitting process, plus projects on all Indian Reservations will immediately die because of this ruling.

More from alarmist Dessler: A surprising alleged confluence of goals

Given the high stakes involved, this lack of information is simply unacceptable. The world therefore needs an IPCC-like assessment of our fossil fuel reserves. While some countries may balk at providing the relevant data needed to verify their reserve estimates, the world must compile the necessary information to assess this risk. Second, we should recognize that solutions to the problems of energy supply and climate change are, to a great degree, aligned. Solutions such as energy efficiency, the cheapest and most cost effective “new” source of energy, and renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and nuclear, can help solve both energy supply and climate problems.

A few solutions, however, address only one problem and not the other, and these policy pathways should be avoided. For example, coal combined with carbon sequestration, where CO2 from coal combustion is sequestered rather than released to the atmosphere, is a poor choice if coal is less abundant than expected. Geoengineering, active manipulation to bring about a cooler global climate, is also a poor choice because it does nothing to address energy availability.