Frank and Kerrie Moe of Craig, Colorado are two small business owners fighting for economic survival because new federal and state regulations on energy production and electricity generation have threatened the livelihood of the entire community they live in.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has introduced new regulations that will retire roughly 10 percent of coal-fired generating capacity in the United States—more than 33 Gigawatts—at a cost between $9.6 and $11 billion each year. The impact on our energy production sector will, by all accounts, be severe.
The twist to this story is that Frank and Kerrie Moe do not work in the energy business. As husband and wife, they own and operate a hotel in Craig that services business linked to the local coal mine and coal power station. For the first time in 15 years, the Moes were forced to lay off employees because the state’s coal industry is struggling to compete with the surge in green tape regulations from the Obama Administration and Colorado’s onerous renewable energy mandates.
The Moe’s story shows that regulations on energy don’t just affect those who produce it—they affect all of the secondary entities that support the industry, who are the unseen victims of the war on affordable energy.
And should the Obama administration’s newest regulations on energy production and generation go through, they will make energy more expensive for everyone who uses it. Together, the Utility MACT rule and Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) are projected to increase electricity rates up to 23 percent in some areas, and could result in the loss of 183,000 jobs per year from 2012-2020.
Then-Senator Obama declared in 2008 that, “If somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them,” and these rules are certainly on track to do so. The Obama administration’s efforts to put coal out of business—even when our air is cleaner today than at any point in the past 40 years—will harm consumers and industry to the sole benefit of those foreign competitors without our rigorous environmental standards.
This is hardly a sensible way to get Americans back to work, nor is it the “all of the above” energy policy promised in the President’s State of the Union speech.
