Think it’s rhetoric when we talk about the job-killing impact of over-regulation? It’s not, and here’s a prime example. Thanks to the EPA’s rules, power plants are closing. What does that mean for the workers? It’s obvious.

The Institute for Energy Research, in its latest report, predicts more than 72 gigawatts of “electrical generating capacity” are going offline. “To put 72 GW in perspective, that is enough electrical generation capacity to reliably power 44.7 million homes – or every home in every state west of the Mississippi River, excluding Texas,” IER report says.

The EPA has received hundreds of thousands of comments on the proposal as it pushes to finalize the rules.

The agency calls it a “commonsense plan” that will tackle the health and economic risks of climate change, including avoiding thousands of premature deaths.

But as the agency claims to be giving states flexibility, those trying to meet the new eco-friendly rules say they are up against unrealistic standards.

In Wyoming, for example, four coal-fired power plants are set to be prematurely shuttered because they fall short of the requirements imposed by the Obama administration to curb carbon emissions.