A few months ago, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced rules geared to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s energy sector. Now U.S. power plant owners are warning that the regulations are unworkable and rely too heavily on untested and very costly carbon capture technologies.

U.S. power plant owners warned the Biden administration on Tuesday that its sweeping plan to slash carbon emissions from the electricity sector is unworkable, relying too heavily on costly technologies that are not yet proven at scale.

Top utility trade group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for revisions of the proposed power plant standards, which hinge on the widespread commercial availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and low-emissions green hydrogen, adding the agency’s vision was “not legally or technically sound.”

“Electric companies are not confident that the new technologies EPA has designated to serve as the basis for proposed standards for new and existing fossil-based generation will satisfy performance and cost requirements on the timelines that EPA projects,” EEI said in a public comment released on Tuesday on the agency’s deadline for feedback.

This is not hyperbole either. North Dakota recently hired the Center of the American Experiment to test whether the EPA’s proposed rules could still enable for electricity to be delivered reliably to states that make up the MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) grid. The organization concluded that the new rules would result in the grid’s destruction.

In many ways, the U.S. is still recovering from the effects of heavy-handed of COVID-19 policies, like lockdowns, and the implementation of such rules, along with restrictions on methane emissions will deal huge blows to American energy and food sectors resulting in massive losses of life. But, then again, that is the whole point of Biden’s efforts isn’t it?

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