"So, I've been thinking about how this new EPA power plant rule will play out.First of all, after an obligatory EPA 1-year comment period and then even more time for the states to decide how they might want to achieve the goals of the rule, it's going to be after the next presidential election before we actually see substantial changes in coal-fired generation resulting from the rule.
How convenient. Old plants are already being shuttered in favor of gas-fired plants, which are currently cheaper. So what's the point of the new regulations?
Well, what might well happen is this. Ten years down the road, "global warming" will turn out to be (surprise!) much weaker than predicted. Since we know the climate models that predicted much greater warming can't be wrong, it must be those new EPA regulations back in 2014 that solved the problem!
We really can control the climate system! We did something...and it worked...retroactively!
It doesn't really matter which came first, or what-caused-what. It didn't matter for the ice core record of temperature changes coming before CO2 changes, and it won't matter for this, either."
As of today, because of fracking and the existing converted coal-2-gas power plants, the US has exceed the CO2 reduction targets set forth in the never signed Kyoto Protocol. CO2 is a trace gas and by itself has marginal greenhouse effects.