Strict carbon emission regulations proposed by President Obama’s EPA will cost coal-based electricity users billions of dollars and will be a job killer, one opponent says.
“In order for those (manufacturing) jobs to be viable, we need access to affordable and reliable energy,” Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce told “UpFront with Mike Gousha,” produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com .
Keith Reopelle with Clean Wisconsin dismissed Manley’s concerns, saying costs of the regs are reasonable and achievable for Wisconsin.
Reopelle cited an EPA study finding in the long run, there would be a slight decrease in energy bills. He also said that utilities can offset costs by investing in energy efficiency.
Manley said he’s open to having a diverse energy portfolio, but slammed Reopelle’s belief that costs wouldn’t go up for energy consumers.
“The idea that we’re going to require utilities to spend many billions of dollars and that is somehow not going to passed along to the ratepayers, and in fact bills are going to go down as Keith and the EPA have suggested, that’s just nonsense,” Manley said.
Reopelle said some companies, such as We Energies, hurt themselves when they recently built coal-based energy plants when they could have built natural gas energy plans.
