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Today (Tuesday), the Missouri Public Utility Alliance stood with U.S. Congressman Ike Skelton and Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson in protecting electric ratepayers across the state from rate increases resulting from changes in federal regulation on green house gases. MPUA General Manager and CEO Duncan Kincheloe, representing eighty-eight municipal electric utilities in the state, announced that Missouri’s municipal electric rate payers could not afford increases in their electric bills resulting from green house gas regulations. Kincheloe’s comments came during a Jefferson City news conference Tuesday in which Congressman Skelton announced legislation to eliminate green house gases from regulation under the Clean Air Act.
The projected rate increases stem from recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal's to change how the agency implements the 40 year old Clean Air Act to include the regulation of carbon dioxide without congressional authority. In speaking out against these changes, Kincheloe explained, “Missouri’s municipal utilities have been leaders in adopting the most advanced and cleanest technology available for producing electricity. Cities in Missouri are leading research programs on carbon sequestration, and generating electricity in co-gen plants, solar cells, landfill gas and biomass. But Missouri has a long heritage in using low-cost coal, and broadbased efforts to eliminate that fuel could cause rates to skyrocket.”
EPA is using authority granted under a 2007 US Supreme Court decision to begin a process of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from stationary sources such as power plants. The agency has not released details of their proposed regulatory system, but in the last six months has rejected air permits for two coal fired power plants because owners did not include evaluations of alternative use of natural gas in their permit applications.
MPUA led efforts this past summer among investor-owned utilities and rural electric co-ops to conduct a study across all retail outlets to determine the cost impact of various climate change plans. The one in which natural gas was substituted for coal would increase rates by 50% immediately with eventual increases of 77% needed by 2020.
Kincheloe strongly endorsed the proposed bipartisan legislation by Skelton and Emerson, “This common sense step is needed to protect ratepayers across our state and we will be working with our counterparts in the utility industry here in Missouri to get this important legislation passed.”
Joining Skelton in co-sponsoring the bill is Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson and Congressman Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Skelton told those at the conference that he believes that Congress never intended to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act and that “we cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats at EPA. America’s energy and environmental policies should be set by Congress.”
Congresswoman Emerson observed, “This legislation is a guarantee that the EPA will not use its rapidly-expanding powers to enact policies which members of Congress know will create untold hardships in the rest of the country, especially in Missouri.”
The Skelton-Peterson-Emerson bill would amend the Clean Air Act to make clear it does not allow for regulation of greenhouse gases as it relates to global climate change, would amend the 2007 Energy Bill to stop EPA from calculating land use changes in foreign countries in determining American renewable fuels policy, and would broaden the definition of renewable biomass to strengthen the American biofuels industry.
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