Overview

The electric power industry has been transformed over the past forty years, becoming more reliable and resilient while meeting environmental goals. A big question now is how to prevent backsliding. Pollution, Politics, and Power tells the story of the remarkable transformation of the electric power industry over the last four decades. Electric power companies have morphed from highly polluting regulated monopolies into competitive, deregulated businesses that generate, transmit, and distribute cleaner electricity. Power companies are investing heavily in natural gas and utility-scale renewable resources and have stopped building new coal-fired plants. They facilitate end-use efficiency and purchase excess electricity produced by rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines, helping to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. But these beneficial changes have come with costs. The once-powerful coal industry is on the edge of ruin, with existing coal-fired plants closing and coal mines shutting down. As a result, communities throughout Appalachia suffer from high unemployment and reduced resources, which have exacerbated a spiraling opioid epidemic. The Trump administration's efforts to revive the coal industry by scaling back environmental controls and reregulating electricity prices have had little effect on the coal industry's decline. Major advances therefore come with warning signs, which we must heed in charting the continuing course of sustainable electricity. In Pollution, Politics, and Power, Thomas O. McGarity examines the progress made, details lessons learned, and looks to the future with suggestions for building a more sustainable grid while easing the economic downsides of coal's demise.

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9780674545434

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Reviews

In revealing many encouraging emission reductions by the electric power industry, Thomas O. McGarity shows what citizen action, regulation, and competition can contribute to expanding energy efficiencies and renewables like solar and wind. This book is a well-documented, eye-opening antidote to the 'doom and gloom' enveloping so many concerned people. -- Ralph Nader, author of <i>Breaking through Power: It's Easier than We Think</i> Pollution, Politics, and Power is a tour de force, analyzing environmental regulation of the power industry over the last half-century. With unmatched mastery, McGarity illuminates the current policy debates by placing them in their historical context, with a bull's-eye on coal. -- Richard Lazarus, author of <i>The Making of Environmental Law</i> Historians of all stripes will find much to value in Tom McGarity's impressive new book...a masterful history of the industry's recent past...Scholars will benefit greatly from McGarity's exceedingly useful and easy-to-understand treatment of the byzantine regulations governing the power sector...Will likely stand as the definitive recent history of the electricity industry and rapidly declining fortunes of coal, setting the standard for anyone writing on these topics. -- William Boyd * Technology and Culture *

In revealing many encouraging emission reductions by the electric power industry, Thomas O. McGarity shows what citizen action, regulation, and competition can contribute to expanding energy efficiencies and renewables like solar and wind. This book is a well-documented, eye-opening antidote to the 'doom and gloom' enveloping so many concerned people. -Ralph Nader, author of Breaking through Power: It's Easier than We Think Pollution, Politics, and Power is a tour de force, analyzing environmental regulation of the power industry over the last half-century. With unmatched mastery, McGarity illuminates the current policy debates by placing them in their historical context, with a bull's-eye on coal. -Richard Lazarus, author of The Making of Environmental Law Historians of all stripes will find much to value in Tom McGarity's impressive new book...a masterful history of the industry's recent past...Scholars will benefit greatly from McGarity's exceedingly useful and easy-to-understand treatment of the byzantine regulations governing the power sector...Will likely stand as the definitive recent history of the electricity industry and rapidly declining fortunes of coal, setting the standard for anyone writing on these topics. -William Boyd, Technology and Culture

Author Information

Thomas O. McGarity is Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Administrative Law at the University of Texas School of Law and former attorney-advisor in the Office of General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is author of Bending Science (Harvard), The Preemption War, and Freedom to Harm, as well as articles in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and The American Prospect. He is a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform.

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