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On 3 August, President Obama and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Clean Power Plan a historic and important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants that takes real action on climate change. Shaped by years of unprecedented outreach and public engagement, the final Clean Power Plan is fair, flexible and designed to strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy. With strong but achievable standards for power plants, and customised goals for states to cut the carbon pollution that is driving climate change, the Clean Power Plan provides national consistency, accountability and a level playing field while reflecting each state's energy mix. It also shows the world that the United States is committed to leading global efforts to address climate change. This book discusses the highlights and provides a review of the Clean Power Plan's implications.
Since the beginning of the Obama Administration, conservative politicians have railed against the President's "War on Coal." As evidence of this supposed siege, they point to a series of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that aim to slash air pollution from the nation's power sector . Because coal produces far more pollution than any other major energy source, these rules are expected to further reduce its already shrinking share of the electricity market in favor of cleaner options like natural gas and solar power. But the EPA's policies are hardly the "unprecedented regulatory assault " that opponents make them out to be. Instead, they are merely the latest chapter in a multi-decade struggle to overcome a tragic flaw in our nation's most important environmental law. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which had the remarkably ambitious goal of eliminating essentially all air pollution that posed a threat to public health or welfare. But there was a problem: for some of the most common pollutants, Congress empowered the EPA to set emission limits only for newly constructed industrial facilities, most notably power plants. Existing plants, by contrast, would be largely exempt from direct federal regulation-a regulatory practice known as "grandfathering." What lawmakers didn't anticipate was that imposing costly requirements on new plants while giving existing ones a pass would simply encourage those old plants to stay in business much longer than originally planned. Since 1970, the core problems of U.S. environmental policy have flowed inexorably from the smokestacks of these coal-fired clunkers, which continue to pollute at far higher rates than their younger peers. In Struggling for Air, Richard L. Revesz and Jack Lienke chronicle the political compromises that gave rise to grandfathering, its deadly consequences, and the repeated attempts-by presidential administrations of both parties-to make things right.
The United States has been experiencing an energy transition for over four decades, and now - thanks to the Clean Power Plan of the Obama Administration and the Paris climate agreement - a clean energy future is moving closer to reality. In Clean Power Politics, Joseph Tomain describes how clean energy policies have been developed and, more importantly, what's necessary for a successful transition to a clean energy future, including technological innovation, new business models, and regulatory reforms. The energy system of the future will minimize the environmental costs of traditional energy production and consumption, and emphasize expanded use of natural resources and energy efficiency. Because many new energy technologies can be produced and consumed at smaller scales, they will shift decision-making power away from traditional utilities and empower consumers to make energy choices about consumption and price. In this way, a clean energy future embodies a democratization of energy.

State Perspectives

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee on Energy and Power

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 130


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It is an interesting debate when two societal principles so integral to our long-term survival seem to come to a head. The Clean Power Plan, a new proposed rule by the EPA to reduce carbon emissions, appears to have sparked just such a battle. A clash seemingly between goals of environmental protection and protection of existing individual jobs is sure to garner public attention. However, this debate is less about jobs versus the environment and more about a shift in jobs from more traditional energy sectors to newer, less established sectors. This article explores the goals of the Clean Power Plan and how proponents and opponents alike frame the issue, especially in Pennsylvania, which is at the center of the changing energy landscape in the United States. President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act into law on December 31, 1970. Many Federal environmental acts were signed into law in the 1970's as a result of growing citizen concern for the environment. The Clean Air Act authorized EPA to enact federal regulations and employ enforcement mechanisms that would control air emissions from both stationary and mobile sources. The Clean Air Act's main purpose has always been protecting the environment, although the cost of compliance and the impact of regulations on American industry were considered by Congress in conjunction with enactment of the Clean Air Act and its amendments. Additionally, any proposed rules, changes, or enforcement mechanisms are required to do the same. This article also addresses those impacts in the context of the recently proposed Clean Power Plan. The science community's knowledge about humans' impact on our climate has changed vastly since 1970 when we knew very little about the future of the world climate and were only beginning to realize that carbon dioxide emissions cause our planet to warm. In addition, coverage of this concept has also increased. These climate change stories have gone from being hidden in the back of technical journals to at the forefront of our mainstream media. In response to increasing concern about the current state of our environment and growing scientific consensus about global climate change, the EPA, on June 18, 2014, proposed a new rule establishing emissions guidelines for states to follow as they develop plans to address greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel electric generating units. This rule would mandate a thirty percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2030. This plan would develop state-specific goals for carbon dioxide emissions from power-related sources and continue progress already underway in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Although the Clean Air Act is an imperfect tool for addressing the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, it is the only available federal mechanism for directly addressing power plant carbon emissions. The Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan, published in final form in August 2015, tackles the challenge. This paper from the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) compiles 13 separately authored essays from 11 CPR Member Scholars, each addressing a different topic related to the Clean Power Plan, and each representing the expertise and views of its individual author(s). Published in July 2015, just before the release of the final rule, the essays tee up key questions about the rule's legality, implications for the energy sector, and a series of discrete implementation questions, including the role of cap-and-trade (and offsets), the nature and distribution of state targets, and implications for environmental justice.
The principal statute addressing air quality concerns, the Clean Air Act was first enacted in 1955, with major revisions in 1970, 1977, and 1990 and is addressed in the first part of this book. Congressional actions on air quality issues have been dominated since 2011 by efforts particularly in the Houseto change the Environmental Protection Agencys (EPAs) authority to promulgate or implement new emission control requirements. EPAs regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants and from oil and gas industry sources have been of particular interest, as have the agencys efforts to revise ambient air quality standards for ozone. The 115th Congress and the Trump Administration are reviewing some of these regulations, with the possibility of their modification or repeal. On October 23, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its final Clean Power Plan rule (Rule) to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), specifically carbon dioxide (CO2), from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. The aim of the Rule, according to EPA, is to help protect human health and the environment from the impacts of climate change. The Clean Power Plan would require states to submit plans to achieve state-specific CO2 goals reflecting emission performance rates or emission levels for predominantly coal- and gas-fired power plants, with a series of interim goals culminating in final goals by 2030.
In 2015, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated the Clean Power Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fueled electric power plants, it concluded that the benefits of reducing emissions would outweigh the costs by a substantial margin under the scenarios analyzed. EPA estimated benefits ranging from $31 billion to $54 billion in 2030 and costs ranging from $5.1 billion to $8.4 billion in 2030, when the rule would be fully implemented. In proposing to repeal the rule in October 2017, EPA revised the estimates of both its benefits and costs, finding in most cases that the benefits of the proposed repeal would outweigh the costs of the proposed repeal. However, EPA found that under other assumptions, the costs of the proposed repeal would outweigh the benefits of the proposed repeal. This report examines the changes in EPA's methodology that led to the revised conclusions about how benefits compare to costs. Three changes to the benefits estimates of the proposed repeal drive the agency's new conclusions. First, it considered only domestic benefits of the Clean Power Plan in its main analysis, excluding benefits that occur outside the United States. Second, it used different discount rates, including one higher rate, than the 2015 analysis to state the present value of future climate benefits expected from the Clean Power Plan. Third, the analysis reduced some estimates of the human health "co-benefits"-that is, the benefits resulting from pollutant reductions not directly targeted by the Clean Power Plan. Specifically, several scenarios assumed no health benefits below specified thresholds for some air pollutants. EPA also changed the accounting treatment of demand-side energy efficiency savings. EPA's 2015 analysis treated savings from energy efficiency measures as a negative cost, whereas the 2017 analysis treated them as a benefit. Using the terminology of the proposed repeal, EPA moved energy savings from the cost savings estimate to the forgone benefits estimate. There was no change in the difference between benefits and costs because the benefits and costs increased by the same amount. This change took on more significance in a separate analysis that EPA conducted to analyze the cost savings of the proposed repeal. EPA based one set of benefit-cost estimates of the proposed repeal on its 2015 power sector modeling, which does not reflect changes that have since occurred in the power sector. EPA based the other set of benefit-cost estimates on more recent power sector projections from the Annual Energy Outlook 2017. The power sector changes subsequent to 2015 are potentially important and include changes in expected electricity demand, expected growth in electricity generation by renewable energy technologies, retirements of older generating units, changes in the prices and availability of different fuels and renewables, and state and federal regulations. While modeling differences render the two sets of estimates incomparable, both sets of estimates show a range of costs exceeding benefits (i.e., net costs), and benefits exceeding costs (i.e., net benefits) of the proposed repeal. EPA stated that it plans to update the power sector modeling and make it available for public comment before it finalizes the proposed repeal. This forthcoming analysis may show the extent to which updated power sector projections may change EPA's benefit-cost estimates.
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