GUEST COMMENTARY: EPA Plan Will Harm Indiana

Via NWI.com: 

For generations, Americans have enjoyed a little recognized advantage that most people in the world can only envy: reliable and affordable electricity.

Utility companies have invested heavily in new environmental controls and clean coal technologies, and made great progress in using our plentiful fossil fuel resources to provide affordable energy in a responsible and environmentally sound way.

But now the Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing implementation of “Clean Power Plan” regulations that would pre-empt this industrywide effort through so-called “federal-state partnership.”

This purported partnership with states would shift primary oversight of state and regional power-generation to the federal government, to the detriment of every electricity consumer. Through this partnership, federal regulators — and environmental activists — would gain de facto authority to restructure the electric power industry in Indiana and across the nation.

In doing so, they would impose what amounts to a new energy consumption tax that would have the greatest impact on those least able to afford it — families and seniors with modest or fixed incomes.

EPA, in its quest to fast-track the adoption of “green energy,” would gain a powerful tool to remove affordable coal-generated electricity from our energy mix and replace it with more costly energy sources subsidized by consumers through higher energy prices.

According to a study released last fall by the energy economics firm Energy Ventures Analysis Inc., by 2020 the EPA proposal would ratchet up the typical household’s annual electricity and natural gas bills by $680 compared to 2012 amounts, an increase of 35 percent. Industrial users would see a 56 percent increase, the report stated.

Worse yet, those amounts would escalate each year thereafter amid gradually tighter EPA regulations.

Consumers are not the only big losers in this equation. State governments lose out because the plan deprives them of much of their essential right to regulate and manage their state’s energy supply. Indiana’s elected leaders are far more likely than federal bureaucrats to provide the most economic benefit to their citizens at the most affordable cost.

The citizens of Indiana, particularly those with low or fixed incomes, cannot afford to pay the higher energy rates that are certain to result from this plan. It is time for Gov. Mike Pence to stop this proposed EPA action in its tracks.

The better choice is to reject EPA’s plan and let Indiana manage the energy needs of its citizens.

See the article here.