Natural Gas or Coal?

Coal burning power plant. Picture from flickr user davipt

The EPA recently put out some new guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable for power plants, according to the New York Times. Recently, companies have been switching to natural gas plants, rather than coal burning ones. Because of this, the EPA has decided to change up the current rules and make them less coal friendly and  more fitting for natural gas plants. Under the new and revised guidelines, companies may only emit 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per each mega-watt hour of electricity produced. For those of you who, like me, have no idea what a mega-watt is, one mega-watt can power, on average, 265 american homes. That's a lot of power. However, the new rules are too strict for coal plants, essentially eliminating their use in the power industry. Fortunately for the coal companies, this new law only affects new power plants, and not plants already built. Many critics cite this as a major flaw in the new legislation, and want stricter guidelines that pertain to all coal fueled plants. The coal industry, on the other hand, believes that the new guidelines are too harsh, and should be lifted. I think that the law should apply to all coal burning power plants, but we'll have to watch what happens in Washington in the next few months.

-John