On Thursday AEP, American Electric Power, announced it would be retiring or down-sizing 11 coal power plants to comply with EPA regulations. In doing so, 600 jobs will be lost worth approximately $40 million in wages. Michael G Morris, AEP President, said in a statement:

We support regulations that achieve long-term environmental benefits while protecting customers, the economy and the reliability of the electric grid, but the cumulative impacts of the EPA’s current regulatory path have been vastly underestimated, particularly in Midwest states dependent on coal to fuel their economies.

He also said EPA’s proposals represented “unrealistic compliance timelines,” with more time and flexibility, AEP could meet the EPA’s environmental goals in a way that “will cost our customers less and will prevent permanent premature job losses.”

The EPA was quick to defend their regulations. In an Email by Roy Seneca, an EPA press officer said:

These long-overdue Clean Air Act standards will slash hazardous emissions of mercury and other acid gases, preventing thousands of asthma and heart attacks and premature deaths..Utilities have known for decades that these standards — which are still in the proposal stage and have a built-in three-year compliance timeline, have been coming for decades. They also know that they are free to approach [the] EPA with serious, fact-based compliance plans, and that state governments also have the ability under the law to seek more time for plants in their jurisdictions. The standards leverage existing American-made pollution control technologies that are already deployed at over half of the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants — and will result in thousands of jobs across the country as workers install the technologies at plants.”

Nice statement by the EPA but they lose credibility in the last sentence. AEP agrees some jobs are being created for the installation of the new equipment but as stated above the result is a net loss of 600 jobs.

It okay , it is not like the country is faced with high unemployment (9.1%), those people losing their jobs will find new ones quickly. There must be a McDonald’s opening somewhere, after all they were responsible for half of the 54,000 jobs created last month.

But I digress.

AEP also states the new regulations will be the cause of higher prices for electricity. It is calculated that customers will face rate increases of more than 35 percent.

In hearings the EPA admits it will cost the industry $11 billion a year to comply with the regulations and they speculate the regulations brings as much as $140 billion in health benefits and save 17,000 lives. This from the same people who are calculating the jobs gained from green energy.

Does any of this surprise you?

It shouldn’t. The President said as a candidate he would go after the coal industry:

President Obama, a man who keeps his word.