epaThe EPA’s latest bureaucratic boondoggle known as the Clean Power Plan is nothing but a hidden tax hike that will slap Coloradans with a 19 percent spike in future energy costs, according to a new analysis by Energy Ventures Analysis.

For those of you at home doing the math, consumers will spend nearly $3 billion for wholesale electricity over eight years, plus a $3.3 billion tab for new energy infrastructure to replace existing power plants retired by the rule.

Here’s what Stuart A. Sanderson president of the Colorado Mining Association, had to say about the proposal in the Colorado Springs Gazette:

 EPA touts the rule as vital to halt the rise in global temperatures when the agency’s data show the Clean Power Plan will have virtually no measurable impact on global temperatures or greenhouse gas concentrations.

EPA doesn’t call this a tax on electricity. But with less money in the family budget for groceries, for the occasional evening out, for paying monthly bills, that’s what consumers might call it. Driving these costs is the Obama administration’s determination to eliminate coal from the mix of fuels that generate electricity – regardless of the burden on households and businesses. Coal generates 39 percent of the nation’s electricity. So removing it from the fuel mix, especially in coal states, will raise demand and prices for alternative fuels to fill the gap.

The EPA just completed two days of dog and pony shows in Denver, otherwise known as public hearings.

Judging by the list of about 100 speakers approved to address King Fed, all but maybe a dozen were part of Big Green, dispatched to echo the EPA’s talking points.

With any luck and the courts willing, the new rules will never see the light of day as several states including Colorado are suing the government to kill the regulations, dead.