Menu
- Human wages, robot purchases in lock-step (4/11/24)
- Heed the call for caution this year in road work zones (4/9/24)
- This year, heed the call for caution in highway work zones (4/9/24)
- Railroad safety should not be left to contract negotiations (4/5/24)
- Rejecting LB764 upholds fairness in Nebraska (4/4/24)
- A wake-up call for young adults: Get your cancer checkups (4/2/24)
- LB 388 continues to raise questions about many issues (3/22/24)
Editorial
Administration actions are about to have real effects
Friday, September 20, 2013
Nebraska's federal-run health insurance exchange is about to open for business, and despite GOP-led efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act, remains the law of the land, as officials remind us at every opportunity.
If the morning coffee crowd has grown weary of discussing that issue, however, the EPA today introduced proposed Clean Air Act standards that are, if enacted fully, likely to have a direct effect on Nebraskans' budget.
Under the President's Climate Action Plan, new large natural gas-fired turbines could emit only 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour, small gas plants could emit 1,100, the same for new coal-fired units.
The EPA contends that power plants are the largest concentrated source of emissions in the United States, accounting for about a third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions. A dozen states already have or are implementing market-based programs to reduce carbon pollution, and more than 25 have set energy efficiency targets and 35 have set renewable energy targets.
While the United States has limits in place for arsenic, mercury and lead pollution that power plants can emit, there are no national limits on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants can emit.
Nebraskans are in the unique position of living in an entirely public-owned power state, and have some of the lowest electrical rates as a result of NPPD's mandate to keep costs down.
But new EPA standards that will be applied to existing power plants are bound to raise costs in a state which relies heavily on low-cost coal from Wyoming. Nebraska's public power status has, in the past, also complicated the move toward wind and renewable energy, sources the new EPA standards are designed to promote.
Many Nebraskans remain unconvinced of the reality of global warming, or at least uncertain that actions like the new EPA rules, imposed on our state and our country, can have meaningful impact without damaging our economy.
But most of them didn't vote for the present administration, anyway. Higher electricity bills will only reinforce their opinion.