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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Simple solution, add a large state tax on coal fired plants and prevent the tax from being paid by residential consumers.

The Supreme Court ruled the federal gov. cannot override states taxes, so adding the very large tax will force the owners to do something.

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Unfortunately the gov cannot decide who ultimately pays for the tax, just who ends up needing to put it on their balance sheet. If residential consumers demand is inelastic, relative to the commercial customers, then they will pay the tax. I have zero insight into whether domestic or commercial customers have higher demand elasticity, but it's worth being aware of this general principle [0].

[0]https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/...

The rules don’t matter at this point in the governance cycle, attempts to be clever will be ignored by the federal government. Start tearing up the rails used for delivery of coal to these plants, and it solves the problem of illegal DOE must run orders for coal generators that have reached retirement and have received grid operator approval to shutdown. No coal supply, no way to satisfy an illegal order.

Be prepared to switch gears and approach an adversary at their level. Legality when the law matters, direct action when the law doesn’t matter.

So go all Richard Daley with a bulldozer? As far as I can tell he never had any consequences.

Indeed. Compare the constituency who benefited from Meigs Field (a well to do minority) vs Northerly Island (Chicago’s general public). If you have public support, laws become lesser concerns. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law" cuts both ways.

These generators are not needed as described by their owners and the grid operators of the grids they operate on, and are costing rate payers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep running collectively. Who is the victim by forcing them offline?

This feels like a great idea on the surface, but will likely be overcome by a federal government no longer playing by the rules, requires swift and decisive action on the state government’s side that has not been consistent across the US, even when there’s an obvious issue and solution.

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