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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
U.S. greenhouse emissions fell in 2017 as coal plants shut
Greenhouse gases emissions from the largest U.S. industrial plants fell 2.7 percent in 2017, the Trump administration said, as coal plants shut and as that industry competes with cheap natural gas and solar and wind power that emit less pollution.
The drop was steeper than in 2016 when emissions fell 2 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said.
EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said the data proves that federal regulations are not necessary to drive carbon dioxide reductions.
[...] While Wheeler gave the administration credit for the reductions, which mainly came from the power sector, the numbers also underscore that the administration has not been able to stop the rapid pace of coal plant shutdowns.
[...] Natural gas releases far less carbon dioxide when burned than coal and a domestic abundance of gas has driven a wave of closures of coal plants. In 2017 utilities shut or converted from coal-to-gas nearly 9,000 megawatts (MW) of coal plants.
[...] The trend of U.S. coal plant shutdowns is expected to pick up this year, with power companies expecting to shut 14,000 MW of coal plants in calendar year 2018.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:59PM
I promised to BRING BACK COAL. As everybody knows. You say I'm a failure. I'm not a failure -- I'm highly successful. Look at the story -- it's a story about 2017. Last year. My first year. And unfortunately we had Obama for part of that one. For almost 3 weeks at the beginning. But we moved very strongly last year. We said, let's repeal the Clean Power Plan -- that's an Obama number and it's really doing a number on our Economy. Because he said, do the scrubber. And some of our wonderful coal plants, they bought the scrubber. Very expensive -- $100 million or even more. Who can afford that, right? So we want to repeal that one. And we're doing the Affordable Clean Energy rule. The ACE rule. epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/proposal-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule [epa.gov]
Look at West Virginia. They love me in West Virginia. You can see it in their faces. The men. The women. The children. Coal. They love their jobs and they love me for bringing back their jobs. A lot of our coal companies went to China. And to many places. They're coming back, believe me. Like our Country is coming back -- in so many ways. We've added over 2,000 NEW JOBS in our beautiful clean coal industry. Something people said would never happen. It's happening. Much faster than I expected.
And by the way, I'm a huge huge environmentalist. I've won many awards for environment. I don't like to brag. But they call me the Environmental Hero. All I can say is, THANK YOU -- working hard!!!