In March of 2014 a regulation called "Boiler MACT" takes effect. The effect of this regulation is to make burning of coal in utility, industrial, and commercial boilers and process heaters ruinously expensive. some coal-fired utility boilers can be retrofitted to meet this requirement but about a quarter of all utility boilers and all industrial, institutional, and commercial boilers will be unable to meet this reg. So they will be taken out of service. This will have huge ramifications through the economy. The US currently has about 8% reserve electric generating capacity. Since half of ll US electricity is generated by coal we will lose about 12.5% of all capacity and that 8% reserve will become a 4.5% shortfall. All the gas-fired "peakers" built in the 1990s are already counted as capacity. it will require about five to seven years to construct new gas-fired plants (thank goodness for fracking) to replace the lost capacity but new pipelines will have to be constructed to move the enormous amounts of gas needed. Anybody who knows anything about boilers knows you cannot economically replace coal with gas. So for five to seven years, rolling or selective blackouts will become commonplace. All utility-sized gas turbines will have to be imported. Nobody in the US makes them. Even after the gas turbine generation is installed, electricity generated from even fracked gas costs about twice what it costs if generated from coal. electric rates will (as promised) skyrocket. Does anybody think half a decade of rolling blackouts will benefit the economy? Does anybody think being forced to buy billions of dollars worth of imports will benefit US jobs? Does anybody think that having electricity cost twice what it does today will do anything but kill US jobs? More enviro-craziness.
