Here Come Obama’s ‘Necessarily Skyrocketing’ Electricity Rates | The Foundry

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American households will be hit hard, as will American businesses. Producers everywhere will try to cover their higher production costs by raising product prices. As a result, consumer demand will fall, and income and employment will drop. There’s no other way to put it: These are unnecessary job-killing, economy-destroying regulations.

Although cap and trade is not law, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) backdoor train wreck of energy regulations is forcing utilities to file for significant rate hikes in years to come because of the upgrades they will have to make or the complete shutdown of older plants.

Take Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E), for instance. In what’s labeled as an “environmental cost recovery,” the utility says ratepayers will see their electric bills increase 19.2 percent by 2016. Why? LG&E spokesman Chip Keeling answered,

The EPA is forcing utilities to do this. We don’t have a choice. It’s not a question of are we going to meet them. The question is when and how and how much money. We have to meet these regulations because the EPA is mandating it for us to do it. They’re forcing us to do it.