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A Junk "Study" from 60 Plus on EPA's Clean Power Plan

A fossil-fuel-industry front group that calls itself the “60 Plus Association” has released a “study” claiming that the EPA’s proposal to curb carbon pollution, known as the Clean Power Plan, would raise utility costs for seniors. Don’t buy it.

The group relies on a sleight-of-hand to make its claim: It cites only the EPA’s projection that electricity prices will increase under its rule (Clean Power Plan Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) Table 3-21) while ignoring the projection, just a few pages later in the very same document, that electricity bills will actually decline. The rule includes efficiency measures that will result in consumers using significantly less power. (RIA Table 3-24). So raw electricity prices will go up a bit, but we will use less power—and pay less overall.

Also, 60 Plus looks only at the agency’s analysis for 2020, rather than its longer-term projections. What happens in the long term is obviously more important. It’s also much more favorable.

Here is a chart that shows projected electricity prices and bills under one of two main scenarios that the EPA analyzes:

Projected Retail Electricity Prices Under EPA’s Option 1, State Compliance Scenario Projected Change in Utility Bills
Cents/kWh Without Rule Cents/kWh Under Rule Percent Change
2020 10.4 11.1 6.5% 3.2%
2025 10.8 11.1 2.9% -5.3%
2030 10.9 11.3 3.1% -8.4%
Source: RIA Tables 3-21, 3-22, 3-23, 3-24.

 

60 Plus points out that electricity prices will rise 6.5 percent in 2020, but it ignores that actual bills will rise by less than half that (3.2 percent) in 2020 and will decline 5.3 percent by 2025 and 8.4 percent by 2030. The numbers are even more favorable under the EPA’s other major scenario, in which states band together and comply in regional groups rather than comply separately. There, bills would fall by 8.7 percent by 2030. (RIA Table 3-24).

Media outlets should ignore this kind of junk from 60 Plus. But at least one local TV station was duped by this release. WDBJ 7 in Virginia not only reported the study, but misreported in just the way 60 Plus wants: by saying it shows that electricity bills will increase under the EPA plan.

Let’s hope no one else picks it up.