Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) is leading a bi-partisan group of Senators calling for a 120 day public comment period on new EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
Normally, there’s a 60 day comment period.
Those regulations will be published in June, possibly as early as next week. Heitkamp says no one yet knows what’s in those regulations – but she has some major concerns.
"There's no strategy," said Heitkamp. "It just seems to be blow-by-blow, an attempt to take out coal."
Heitkamp says in her mind, there is what some have described as a "war on coal." And she says there has to be a path forward to keep coal in the energy generation mix.
"What people don't understand is how critically important this resource of coal is to the reliability of electricity in this country," said Heitkamp. She says more than 40 percent of US electricity comes from coal – and in North Dakota, that figure is closer to 80 percent.
Heitkamp says that may mean new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – and she believes utilities should be offered incentives to make those investments. But Heitkamp says that’s the rub.
"You get people on one end who want to put a stake through the heart of it (coal) and don't want to make any investment into it," said Heitkamp. "That's absolute folly. Then you have people on the other end who think the industry shouldn't have to address any of the concerns the rest of the world has, and that we have."
Heitkamp says her message is, "I don't care if it's against your religion -- believing in climate change. We are going to live in a carbon-constrained world, so we have to adapt."
Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) has also signed the letter to the EPA.
