Skip to footer

Report: EPA regulations would cost 1.5 million jobs over next four years

Environmental Protection Agency regulations would reduce US employment by 1.5 million jobs over the next four years, according to a new study by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

|
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File
US Environmental Protection Agency Director Lisa Jackson speaks during a press conference in this December 2009 file photo.

 A new analysis of EPA regulations that would impact the coal-based electricity industry projects that seven rules would reduce U.S. employment by 1.5 million jobs over the next four years. The analysis was conducted by National Economic Research Associates (NERA) on behalf of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and described in a 129-page report, “Economic Implications of Recent and Anticipated EPA Regulations Affecting the Electricity Sector.”

“If the EPA is allowed to continue its aggressive anti-coal agenda, the American economy will lose another 1.5 million jobs in the next four years,” said Mike Duncan, president and CEO of ACCCE. “The EPA does not consider the economic consequences of their actions, which in this case will not only erase American jobs; it will raise annual costs to families by hundreds of dollars, the equivalent of a monthly grocery bill.”

Key findings of the NERA analysis include:

  • The regulations will cause employment losses totaling 1.5 million jobs over just the next four years, with a quarter million of those job losses occurring in the Midwest. Employment losses will continue beyond that timeframe, averaging 544,000 to 887,000 jobs annually.
  • Electricity consumers will spend as much as $67 billion more for electricity.
  • The average family’s income will drop by $200 to $500 annually, which is equivalent to a family’s monthly grocery bill.
  • An unprecedented number of coal-fueled power plants will be forced to shut down. Between 54,000 to 69,000 megawatts of coal-fueled electricity generation will be shut down, mostly because of the EPA regulations. This is roughly equivalent to the combined electricity supplies of Ohio, Virginia and Iowa. This is also more than the total electricity supply of either Pennsylvania or Florida.
  • The electric sector faces enormous compliance costs. Electricity generators would be required to spend $15 billion to $16.7 billion annually on compliance costs over the next two decades.

A summary of NERA’s report is available on the ACCCE website at: http://www.americaspower.org/sites/default/files/NERA-Analysis-Highlights-Oct26.pdf

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Report: EPA regulations would cost 1.5 million jobs over next four years
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1103/Report-EPA-regulations-would-cost-1.5-million-jobs-over-next-four-years
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe