Georgia Power, that state’s largest power company, announced this week that it is asking state regulators for permission to shut down 15 electrical generating units — the closure of four power plants in all. The utility company says new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency — known as the Utility MACT rule — will simply make the plants too expensive to run.

The regulations in question are intended to reduce the amount of mercury released into the air. But in fact, they have every appearance of being a back-door attempt to regulate carbon emissions — precisely the kind of scheme that then-Sen. Barack Obama had in mind when he acknowledged in 2008 that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his energy plan.