More reports on costs of impending regulations
This WFPL blog posting (via the ACT Facebook page) repeats the theme of my posts yesterday.
Several utility companies across Kentucky told a legislative committee ratepayers should expect a 20 percent increase over the next five years, largely due to environmental upgrades.
According to KPR’s Tony McVeigh:
“Representatives of several coal-fired utilities in Kentucky say meeting federal clean air standards already in the pipeline will require investments of billions of dollars. John Voyles of LG&E and KU says their capital costs could rise by four billion dollars over the next ten years.
‘This does not deal with the water rules. It does not deal with renewable portfolio standards of any kind. And it certainly does not deal with any climate change rules that might still be legislated in the future.’” (emphasis added)
The costs associated with environmental/greenhouse gas regulations and renewable portfolio standards are going to start hitting ratepayers – HARD – in the very near future. As I discussed in my Message from the Editor article in the just released edition of American Coal magazine, we NEED our coal generation base more than ever, because when the other options demonstrate that they can’t do the job, or will double … triple the costs, we always fall back on affordable, abundant/secure, and clean running coal capacity.
One just hopes that the increasingly strict regulations and skyrocketing costs have not forced the shuttering of too many of our coal plants before these heavy costs start impacting our already fragile economy. It won’t be long before we’ll desperately need the low cost, always on, affordable energy that coal provides.