November 14th, 2008
Court's decision is boon for alternative energy
Good news for alternative energy technologies: An environmental review board has shot down EPA approval of a new coal plant, saying that the Environment Protection Agency needs to come up with nationwide standards for dealing with carbon dioxide.
Wired reports that the decision means lengthy and stricter rulemaking will ensue, making investment in expensive coal plants substantially riskier. So where will that money go? Alternative energy.
Where do you think that money is going to go? It’s going to go to wind. It’s going to go to solar. It’s going to go to something that’s going to get built,” Sierra Club counsel David Bookbinder said. “This is incredibly good for green energy.”
The Environmental Appeals Boards’ decision to send the coal plans back to EPA with instructions to come up with standards was not a legal victory exactly, Bookbinder said, but the result is the same.
“It’s punting in a technical, legal sense but what it does is give us everything we wanted,” Bookbinder said. “This plant is dead and every other one is going to have to sit around.”
