EIA: Clean Power Plan Will Increase Prices, Reduce Reliability

The EPA’s so-called “Clean Power Plan” to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants has come under fire from utilities, regional grid operators, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)—basically, any entity that has some responsibility for seeing that consumers are provided with reliable and affordable electricity. Now, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, confirms what the energy experts have been saying all along—the Clean Power Plan will raise electricity prices and result in a much greater loss of coal generation than the EPA projected, risking the reliability of the grid.