Obama Seeking to Make Good on Electricity Price Promise

When Obama said that his policies would "necessarily make the price of electricity skyrocket," he wasn't being hyperbolic - he was deadly serious. And now that cap-and-trade is dead in Congress, he is using the EPA to make it happen by fiat. From the WSJ:

Yesterday the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a highly regarded federal energy advisory body, released an exhaustive "special assessment" of this covert program. NERC estimates that the Environmental Protection Agency's pending electric utility regulations will subtract between 46 and 76 gigawatts of generating capacity from the U.S. grid by 2015. To put those numbers in perspective, the worst-case scenario would amount to a reduction of about 7.2% of national power generation, and almost all of it will hit coal-fired plants, the workhorse that supplies a little over half of U.S. electricity.

...In a recent research note, Credit Suisse estimates that compliance will cost as much as $150 billion in capital investment by the end of the decade. All of this will flow through to rising electricity prices, which is the same as a tax increase on businesses and consumers.

So - increasing demand for electricity, a 7% reduction in supply and $150 billion in new costs. Who do you think will be paying for the higher electricity costs in a couple of years? (Hint: not Obama).