http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443989204577603462733...

In Tuesday's decision, two of the three judges on the appellate panel found that under the rule "upwind States may be required to reduce emissions by more than their own significant contributions to a downwind State's nonattainment. EPA has used the good neighbor provision to impose massive emissions reduction requirements on upwind States without regard to the limits imposed by the statutory text."

The court found that the feds also broke the law by dictating the measures to be used to reduce emissions instead of allowing states to design their own plans, as the statute demands. "Congress did not authorize EPA to simply adopt limits on emissions as EPA deemed reasonable," wrote Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

there is some politics here as well - don't really want to go there, because I like most of you.  Suffice to say, at least for 2013, most of the existing low cost (old) coal fired plants aren't going anywhere.  

Maybe this will give a chance to work out cross state air rules that protect the environment and our power grid.  

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I disagree, coal production is sustainable at these cheap prices and NG is not.  Coal starts replacing NG at a little of $3/mcf for power generation and does anyone think that NG production and pricing will stay at current levels for the next 5 years.  Coal has many bad qualities, but being expensive to produce is not one of them.  People forget that the US also has 100 years of coal reserves.  Finally in November, coal power plants may get a 4 year reprieve.

Be nice if we could get the EPA to shut down all the NG plays around the country except ours huh?

This is my $0.02 -

The greenhouse rule for coal fired power plants will prevent most of those that are not well into the permitting stage from being built, with the possible exception of carbon capture, storage, and sequestration sites.  Of Course, CCS coal plants are much more expensive per unit of power than nat gas.  The new mercury rules will kill some of the older plants, but you can substitute coal with less mercury and/or use various systems to remove the mercury.  Relatively speaking, its a lower hurdle to meet the mercury rules than the clean air transport rules.  

Clean air transport rule, if enacted as originally written, would have taken a lot of baseload capacity (in the multiple gigawatt range) off line in 2013 and 2014.  Power companies negotiated to extend that some, such that some of the loss would have been avoided and other would have been delayed.  Even with those changes, I think nationwide, we were talking about losing 4-6 gigawatts of largely cheap coal baseload.  

AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low

By KEVIN BEGOS AP

posted: 3:54 PM 08/17/12

http://www.dailyfinance.com/article/ap-impact-co2-emissions-in-us-d...

Who is John Gault?

Clean Coal is an oxymoron.  And air pollution is just one of the problems with coal.  Anyone remember this?

Judge: TVA liable for massive Tenn. coal ash spill

Updated 10:49 a.m., Thursday, August 23, 2012

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority is liable for a huge spill of toxin-laden sludge in 2008 in East Tennessee.

The judge ruled Thursday in favor of hundreds of plaintiffs who sued after a containment dike at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant burst on Dec. 22, 2008. The failure spilled 5 million cubic yards of ash into a river and spoiled hundreds of acres in a riverside community 35 miles west of Knoxville.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Varlan said in a written opinion that TVA was negligent in its conduct and will be liable for damages to be determined later.

TVA is continuing a $1.2 billion cleanup of the spill the Environmental Protection Agency described as one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slu...

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