Just how much will EPA coal-fired plant regs affect the economy?

…Not as much as some would have you believe, according to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

In an op-ed in the Huffington Post, Jackson says the claims that her agency’s plans to regulate air pollution from dirty coal-fired power plants are an economic “train wreck” waiting to happen, leading to plant closure and job loss, are a bunch of nonsense:

On the issue of plant closures, I take the word of industry leaders like the Chairman and CEO of Exelon Corporation, who said “These regulations will not kill coal… up to 50% of retirements are due to the current economics of the plant due to natural gas and coal prices.” The Congressional Research Service report also found that EPA’s standards will primarily affect “coal-fired plants more than 40 years old that have not, until now, installed state-of-the-art pollution controls.” That echoed the remarks of the CEO of American Electric Power from April of this year: “We’ve been quite clear that we fully intend to retire the 5,480 megawatts of our overall coal fleet because they are less efficient and have not been retrofitted in any particular way.”

But there’s a bigger picture here.

Jackson points out that her agency’s goals - to protect Americans from pollution that causes asthma, cancer and other serious conditions - are being framed as job-killers by politicians with a hefty financial stake in the continued use of dirty energy. In other words: Consider the messenger.

As a senior official from the Bush EPA recently wrote, “Abolishing the EPA will not cause a revival of America’s economy, but it will certainly result in a major decline in public health and our quality of life.” 

What do you think of the EPA’s efforts to regulate anachronistic coal-fired power plants? What about the political machinations that are hampering these efforts? Let us know in the comments.