The preliminary costs suggest, based upon EPA, well, the EPA analysis so far, shows that rates will rise between about 1.5 and 2.5 percent by 2025 as a result of the SOx and NOx requirements.

We should do it this year.

If you figure that out, you are going to make 2 or 3 billion dollars and solve a great big problem that we have.

I want to thank you for your exceptional service in your job and complement the President and you on his recent comments on nuclear power.

Our legislation provides an aggressive--but we think achievable--schedule for fossil fuel power plants to reduce harmful emissions.

We need legislative certainty to protect public health because too many lives are at stake.

There is no excuse remaining for not moving ahead to do what we know how to do with SOx, NOx and mercury.

Those are significant reductions that the EPA agrees will save more than 215,000 lives over a 15-year period.

Air pollution knows no State boundaries.

Well, my major request to you, and I said this to the Administrator yesterday, is that you put a very high priority on doing whatever EPA can do to help Senator Carper, Senator Voinovich, any of us to understand the actual cost of the…

So, this is a jobs issue for us. It will enable us to give certainty so that we can continue to use low cost reliable coal.

Yes, a lot of us would like to get on with the legislation, and we want to know what it costs before we do.

But in our legislation, we make it for all low-carbon forms of energy.

Thanks, Tom. These are very helpful conversations.

I am for low cost electricity. I am for cleaning up the air. And I think this year is the time to do it.

I think our country's best interest is the same, which is to continue to have coal as a low cost big supplier of electricity.

I appreciate the comment, Mr. Chairman. Just my own thought, I am not in favor of trading mercury, but some averaging might be worth our thinking about.

We did a little computation of--we asked the Energy Information Administration--wind power gets 25 times as much Government subsidy per megawatt hour as all other forms of electricity combined.

But to reach 90, then, you would have to buy some other technology like Mr. Durham's technology and add it to the SCR and scrubber?

I appreciate the difficult financial environment.

I am happy, A, that you are focusing on treasured landscapes and, B, that the President--over the last 6 weeks-- has begun to take significant steps to encourage nuclear power because it has less impact on the landscape.

Our goal is not to eliminate surface mining of coal but to limit the practice of blowing off the top of a mountain and dumping the fill in streams.

I have never suspected--I am not a scientist--that you could capture and sequester enough carbon from coal plants to make that all work.

My concern is especially with the ridges of the Eastern United States, as you know, because we have talked about it because they are the only place, except for the coastlines, where wind works well.

I do not want us to put a law--in the early estimates from EPA are that the cost might not be more than $2 or $3 a month more on the average electric bill by 2025.