Obama Takes On Coal With First-Ever Carbon Limits

[kpete]

Source: Huffington Post

Obama Takes On Coal With First-Ever Carbon Limits

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming.

The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It's also a key step in President Barack Obama's global warming plans, because it would help end what he called "the limitless dumping of carbon pollution" from power plants.

Although the proposed rule won't immediatedly affect plants already operating, it eventually would force the government to limit emissions from the existing power plant fleet, which accounts for a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Obama has given the Environmental Protection Agency until next summer to propose those regulations.

The EPA provided The Associated Press with details of the proposal prior to the official announcement, which was expected Friday morning. The public will have a chance to comment on the rule before it becomes final.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/obama-carbon-limits_n_3958693.html

[Union Scribe]

1. Excellent!

This will run into big money opposition from the polluters (on a related note I saw a commercial today about how safe fracking is, wtf!) but this is the kind of measure which must be taken.

[warrant46]

5. And about time !!

This will take guts no doubt about it

[Triana]

2. The Koch Mafia will hate it and enlist an army of lobbyists and mountains of money...

...to prevent it ever becoming enforceable.

[Dragonfli]

3. finally clean coal!

[drynberg]

4. WELL, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER, HOWEVER WE GOTTA GO

Beyond Coal Now, y'know, renewables like the rest of the enlightened world...time is tick tick ticking...

[seveneyes]

6. It's time to start putting windmills on top of every tall building in the cities

I see them sprouting up on many mountain ridges and hills. No reason cities can't have their own.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. The structural loads have to be taken into account

You may be able to put small ones up, but existing roofs won't be designed to carry significant additional weight (and horizontal forces might be significant with large ones too). Small turbines don't produce that much power.

[seveneyes]

8. Good point

Certainly, the beefier steel structure buildings could handle a significant turbine anchored at the corners of the building.

[timstephens13]

9. .

The coal companies in WV should start building wind farms on top of the mountains they have already chopped the tops off of. It would be a start in transitioning away from coal, all these natural resources are not going to be around forever.