Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced a new rule on power plant emissions, that lawmakers say could cost approximately 1.65 million jobs over an eight year period and threaten the reliability of the electric grid.
"The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution," Jackson said today in a statement, "and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance."
"Analyses predict EPA's rules will force the premature retirement of power plants that are needed to provide affordable, reliable power to consumers and our growing economy," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said after the EPA announced the rule. "Other plants will require multi-million dollar retrofits that will result in higher electricity bills."
House Oversight and Government Relations Committee lawmakers believe that MATS, which includes the Utility MACT rule, could kill 186,000 jobs per year between 2012 and 2020 -- 1.65 million jobs total -- citing a study by National Economic Research Associates. "The Committee is not satisfied that EPA has conducted a good faith analysis of the employment impact of the rule," Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulator Affairs, wrote in a letter earlier this month. "EPA's jobs analysis failed to look at the impact that higher energy prices would have on employment," they added.
Issa and Jordan also suggested that the "EPA has purposefully ignored grid reliability issues." The Wall Street Journal reported that EPA staffers expressed concern that the rule could contribute to blackouts by weakening the electric grid, but "their political superiors have erased the warnings" in published reports on the rule before it was enacted.
"Many facilities will need workers to build, install, operate and maintain these pollution controls," EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones told The Washington Examiner when asked about the effect of this rule on jobs. "EPA estimates that implementing this rule will provide employment for tens of thousands of Americans, by supporting 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs."
