Relaxed CO2 Standards in USA
In his latest executive order, President Trump will order his Cabinet to start demolishing a wide array of Obama-era policies on global warming — including emissions rules for power plants, limits on methane leaks, a moratorium on federal coal leasing, and the use of the social cost of carbon to guide government actions. Under Obama, EPA set CO2 standards for anyone who wants to build a new power plant.
The Obama-era standards basically make it impossible to build a new coal-burning facility in the United States unless it can capture its carbon emissions and sequester them underground, a costly and still-nascent technology known as CCS.
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/27/14922516/trump-executive-order-climate
Yes. This is the economically destructive aspect of pollution control which Trump is trying to overcome. The technology of coal-fired power plants has now progressed to the point where all the 'real' pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate carbon, arsenic, mercury, and so on, can be virtually eliminated, or at least reduced to insignificant levels that pose no threat. Such power plants are known as 'Ultra-supercritical'. They burn the coal at much higher temperatures and pressures. They cost more to build, but burn the coal more efficiently, so the extra construction cost is soon offset by the savings in the cost of the coal used.
http://cornerstonemag.net/setting-the-benchmark-the-worlds-most-efficient-coal-fired-power-plants/However, eliminating the much more abundant emissions of CO2 is too costly at present. Describing the clean and odourless gas called CO2, as a pollutant, and placing it in the same category as
real pollutants that are known with certainty to harm our health, is a very neat trick by the alarmists, to smash the coal industry by making it uneconomical.
Unfortunately, the consequences of this approach to solving the uncertain threat of CO2, are rising energy prices.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/the-escalating-cost-of-electricity/What is perhaps not appreciated by most people is that the true cost of energy underpins all human activity and prosperity in our modern societies. A rise in the average cost of energy, world-wide, is equivalent to an average pay cut for everyone, unless such increases in energy costs are offset by increases in efficiency.
