Affordable Energy is Key to Jobs, Health, Progress and Justice
by Niger Innis
Aug 22, 2011
Energy Biz Insider
The Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing regulatory initiatives that the agency says will protect minority and poor Americans from pollution that disproportionately affects them, their health and basic principles of “environmental justice.”
As a coalition of minority, civil rights, religious, elderly and small business groups, the Affordable Power Alliance strongly supports public health, pollution control and justice as essential public policy goals. However, we are concerned that EPA’s proposed rules actually undermine those objectives, by impairing access to affordable, reliable energy.
EPA’s health claims about mercury, soot, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants appear to be speculative and based less on science than on selective literature searches, according to an extensive analysis written by natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon and posted at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org. EPA’s approach fails to consider extensive studies that contradict the agency’s claims that poor and minority communities face serious, immediate health risks from power plant emissions, say Soon and other scientists cited in the report.
These emissions have been declining for decades and are not related to asthma rates – which have been rising for reasons unrelated to outdoor air pollution, say air pollution consultant Joel Schwartz and other experts. The APA believes rapid power plant emission reductions of this magnitude are thus not necessary and will cause serious unintended consequences.
EPA’s pollution rules will impair access to affordable electricity. These rules, when final, could well force the closure of multiple power plants, send electricity prices soaring 12-60 percent, and severely impact business and family budgets, according to studies from Management Information Services (MIS) and utility associations. Especially in the 26 states that rely on coal for 48-98% of their electricity, EPA’s actions will raise factory, hospital, office, hotel, school and other business electricity costs by thousands to millions of dollars a year.
Because every $30,000 in increased energy costs could mean the elimination of another entry-level job, EPA’s rules will cause further job losses. MIS predicts that 3.5 million jobs and up to $82 billion in annual economic production will be lost in just six Midwestern manufacturing states. Chicago public schools alone will face an extra $2.7 million a year for electricity costs by 2014, notes the Chicago Tribune. These increases will mean reductions in future school employment, salaries and after-school programs.
Unemployment Rate
America’s unemployment is already 9.1% and more than16% in black communities. EPA’s plans will worsen these jobless rates, while significantly raising household energy costs – making poor, minority and elderly families even less able to afford gasoline, food, clothing, healthcare and other basic needs.
Many families will suffer increased stress, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and crime rates. Disproportionate numbers of people in low income communities will face heat prostration in summer heat waves, because they will be unable to pay for air conditioning. Millions will confront hypothermia during frigid winter months. People will die, as cash-strapped states run out of money for AC and heating assistance even more rapidly than they did this year.
Retrofitting older plants is often too costly to justify and, in today’s regulatory and litigious environment, replacing them will be extremely difficult. EPA’s rules could thus cost Illinois 3,500 megawatts of electricity generation by 2014 – enough to power 3,500,000 homes and small businesses. The United States could lose 17,000 to 60,000 megawatts of capacity by 2017, according to industry and independent analysts. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission estimates 81,000 megawatts of capacity could be lost.
That means further impaired electricity availability and reliability during peak use periods. It will likely result in brownouts and blackouts, further harming businesses, schools, families, jobs and health.
EPA says the benefits of its new rules “far exceed” their costs. Its conclusions certainly have support — among environmental groups and even certain utility companies, especially those that rely heavily on natural gas or nuclear.
However, the agency and its supporters are focusing on emissions from older power plants, which it claims pose imminent dangers to poor and minority neighborhoods. The problem is that EPA’s analyses and definitions of “public welfare” and “environmental justice” fail to consider the factors presented here. As many analysts have pointed out, the adverse effects of unemployment, sharply higher energy costs and generally lower socio-economic conditions far outweigh benefits of improved air quality.
EPA’s mission is to protect Americans from real health risks – not speculative dangers based on cherry-picked data and linear extrapolations, say environmental and public health experts like Soon, Schwartz and Dr. Roger McClellan, former chair of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. The agency must also avoid implementing rules that adversely affect vital components of “public health and welfare” like those discussed here.
Abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the foundation for everything we eat, make, ship and do – and for human health, environmental quality, civil rights progress and environmental justice.
The Affordable Power Alliance believes America needs a full national and congressional debate on these rules, before they cause damage that many experts fear is inevitable if they are implemented.
Niger Innis is co-chair of the Affordable Power Alliance, a coalition of organizations that represent African, Hispanic, Asian, Native Americans, as well as the elderly, poor and small businesses – who believe reliable, affordable energy is the foundation of environmental justice and human health and welfare. The views expressed here are solely those of the Alliance. For more information about these issues, please visit www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org
Read the article here: http://www.energybiz.com/article/11/08/religious-civil-rights-groups-caution-epa
