How About Some Hot, Steaming Shit? EPA Looking At Ways To Keep Coal Plants Open Longer, Because AI
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lee Zeldin announced this week that the Trump administration will “reconsider” federal rules that pushed power companies to start planning to reduce their climate-altering pollution over the next couple of decades. “[W]hen coal plants are open, viable and thriving,” the EPA wrote in a fact sheet accompanying the announcement, “we won’t have to rely on energy sources from adversaries.”
The U-turn throws open the doors for utilities to keep their coal plants running for decades without curbing their climate-altering emissions, part of a wider deregulatory surge the EPA announced this week. n justifying its retreat from climate action, the EPA said it sought to “Make the United States the Artificial Intelligence Capital of the World,” and cited Trump executive orders related to AI and energy. It also said that “[c]oncerns have been raised” over the costs and feasibility of the technology that power plants would need to hit federal standards on greenhouse gas pollution, and described objections that the technologies are “not adequately demonstrated or are too costly.” The EPA’s deregulations come after roughly a dozen electrical companies wrote a Jan. 15 letter to Lee Zeldin, Trump’s then-expected nominee to lead the EPA, part of a broader lobbying push first reported by Canary Media.
Carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, “is the only option that allows a coal-fired plant to operate past 2039,” the utilities wrote, adding that CCS will also be required at new natural gas plants built after 2032, under emissions-reduction rules set by the EPA last year. The rules would also require all coal plants still in operation after 2039 to install technology like CCS to reduce emissions. “But this option is unproven, extremely costly, and impossible to implement by 2032,” the utilities wrote to Zeldin.
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Ed. - In other words, the utilities know that "carbon capture" is full-on bullshit, and they don't want to pay for it, and besides it doesn't matter anyway, as we move to the sunlight uplands of 500 ppm CO2 with AI-generated "content" to keep us safe. Jesus Fucking Christ.
https://www.desmog.com/2025/03/14/trump-plan-to-use-epa-to-promote-ai-could-harm-the-climate-and-drive-up-electric-bills/