The following article is more of a political article but it exposes one of the reasons why business electricity prices are headed up. In the near future, we may never see electricity rates as low as they are now, so why not at least lock-in a rate for the next few years. Here’s an excerpt from the original article which was published in TownHall.com
What Obama Did on His Summer Vacation: Kill 760,000 Jobs
John Ransom | Jul 05, 2013
Prepare for your electric rates to go up, Chevy Jolt drivers. That’s what happens when Obama goes on vacation.
Under executive fiat, the EPA will shortly be forcing the shutdown of the rest of the coal fired plants in the United States. Obama closed about 20 percent of them in 2011 when he went on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.
With a bigger vacation budget this year, he probably figured “What the hell? Why not close the rest of them?”
Since coal generates about half the electricity demanded in the US, the country will have to find other, more expensive ways of making up half of the electrical capacity at a time that the administration wants electric to be the clean fuel of choice.
Ironically, as I posted previously, just a few weeks ago I got a whiney email from the public relations guy at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, complaining that the number of nuclear reactors going up to generate electric is lower than they anticipated.
Maybe Obama doesn’t understand that he can’t import electricity from Brazil. No nuclear, no coal? OK, I get it. This is how Obama bails out his buddies in the solar business, including Buffet and G.E.
That solar costs more and isn’t clean probably has some advantages for Obama.
In addition to the loss of electrical generating capacity, the Commerce Department estimated that when they killed just 20 percent of coal fired plants they killed up to 60,000 jobs, according to Heritage, while an industry trade group said that the rules will cost $129 billion, according to the Washington Post.
So that’s…carry the two, divide by 5…. That’s 60,000 direct jobs in power plants, another 82,000 jobs in mining, and 30,000 jobs in coal transport plus associated jobs.
According to the The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity the new initiatives will cost the country 760,000 jobs in total. Read the full article.
So how will electricity prices be affected?
As this article points out, in addition to all the jobs that will no longer exist, as coal fired power plants disappear, America will need to make up about half of the country’s generating capacity. This won’t come cheap and prices will just skyrocket. Business electric prices will surely effect the bottom line of every American business.
At least in about half the country we have the option of selecting our electricity provider and today’s business electricity prices can be locked in with a flat rate contract. An experienced energy consultant can do all the work for you and it won’t cost you a dime. For a no cost, no obligation electric rate analysis
CLICK HERE
