This is the first time ever that the feds are regulating new power plants, which of course is a much bigger carrot to get owners to comply with strict standards. This is very good news for the environment, assuming the lobbyists don't neuter it before implementation:

In one of the most significant reversals of Bush-era policy, the Obama administration plans [this week] to issue greenhouse pollution limits for new power plants, a major step in the fight against global warming. The new rule — which will go into effect in 2013 — confirms the end of the era of dirty coal-fired power plants:

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits between 800 and 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

Since the late 1990s, “natural gas has been the fuel of choice for the majority of new generating units,” and in the 2000s, wind power generation also grew significantly. With the high cost of its toxic pollution from mine to plant, coal has been losing out to cleaner sources of fuel in the electric utility sector. Although few new coal plants have been built in the last twenty years, aging plants — some built in the 1930s — still produce about 40 percent of U.S. electricity, and about 80 percent of carbon pollution from the power sector.

It's bad news for the coal industry -- and the communities which are economically dependent on coal:

The rule announced Tuesday could either derail or jump-start plans for 15 new coal-fired power plants in 10 states, depending on when they start construction. Those that break ground in the next year would be exempt from the new limit. Those that start construction later will have to eventually comply with the rule.

Existing power plants, even if they make changes that increase emissions, would not be covered at all. And new ones would have years to meet the standard and could average their emissions over three decades in order to meet the threshold.

But eventually, all coal-fired power plants would need to install equipment to capture half of their carbon pollution. While not commercially available now, the EPA projects that by 2030, no new coal-fired power plant will be built without carbon capture and storage.

The coal industry has been publicly supportive of carbon capture and sequestration (CSS), but it's likely that now that a requirement that will diminish or even destroy them is actually pending, they will not go quietly into that good night. Be prepared to fight if you want to stop climate change.

A big thank-you to xoff at UppityWisconsin for this find. Remember that power plant provision? It wasn't in the document passed by the Senate on Wednesday. But guess what! It was changed before the Assembly vote on Thursday to include it.

Thursday, the fiscal bureau was forced to correct its memo describing the bill, after unearthing some more buried treasure. Seems there were a few things the original memo forgot to mention:

There are two items in the LFB's March 10 document that are not reflected in the March 9 document.

1. The March 10 document includes a provision of the substitute amendment on the Earned Income Tax Credit (page 3, #1).

2. The March 10 document includes a provision of the substitute amendment on the Sale and Contractual Operation of State-Owned Power Plants (page 20, #1)

.

Here are images of the table of contents:

Wednesday's version - PDF (This was the one I used for my analysis):

Thursday's version - PDF (voted on by Assembly as amended):

Here's the language in the second version of the document:

1. SALE AND CONTRACTUAL OPERATION OF STATE-OWNED POWER PLANTS
Governor: Allow the Department of Administration (DOA) to sell any state-owned heating, cooling, or power plant or contract with private entities for the operation of any such plant,
with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount the Department determines to be in the best
interest of the state.

As a reminder, that power plant provision points directly to Koch Industries, who is already advertising for power plant managers.

Someone just pulled a fast one in Wisconsin. A fast one that should be illegal for so many reasons I can't count them all. But let's just call it this: Fraud. When will the Attorney General investigate?

In the meantime, Scott Walker makes the specious and disgusting claim that the only dirty tricksters are the heroic Wisconsin 14. He gives the term "sociopath" new meaning.

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Update: I just spent a couple of hours going through the Wisconsin statutes, as published today. There were three iterations of the Budget Repair Bill, as published on the site. The March 10th report linked above outlines all three, so for consistency I'm going to refer to them as that report does. There is the Governor's bill, the Joint Finance, and the Conference Committee version.

The Governor's bill had the plant sale provision as originally reported earlier by Heather. The Joint Committee resolution modified that provision in certain respects, but did not materially change the basics. It added a review period and required a cost-benefit analysis, among other things. The Conference Committee version stripped everything out relating to sale or lease of facilities, leaving only the language pertaining to debt service.

According to what I can find on the Wisconsin Legislature site, the version which is now law includes the sale provisions as agreed to by the Joint Finance committee. State Senator Chris Larson confirmed that awhile ago on twitter, too. He also said he thought the two bills were identical as passed.

One of two things is going on here. Either the "Conference Committee" was a sham and they passed a bill which actually required a bigger quorum to pass, given the fiscal impact; OR, they substituted the Joint Finance version in the Assembly to include the broader powers after passing the narrower version in the Senate.

Either way, it's a bait and switch, and if it's the former, then it would seem to me that the Senate action should be easily nullified since they did not have the required quorum to pass such a bill.