The more aggressive goal weakens natural gas’s role in America’s energy future in favor of a quicker transition to zero-carbon sources of electricity.
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News reports are saying that President Obama’s Clean Power Plan has set new targets for Montana that are twice as large as those floated last year in a draft of the plan. “And we’re giving states and utilities the time and the flexibility they need to adopt strategies that work for them”, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a conference call discussing the plan.
Earlier versions of the plan would have required that Arizona achieve some of the steepest carbon-emission reductions in the nation.
Check out this excellent chart compiled by my colleague Alex Guillen.
“This is the most ambitious initiative any president in history has taken to reduce heat-trapping emissions“.
“There are a lot of moving parts in the rule, and a most of those are interdependent”.
That is a radical change. While some concessions were made to critics, the final rules actually increase the carbon cuts demanded from states and will have long-lasting impacts on the way power is produced.
“Reducing carbon emissions to meet the requirements of EPA’s Clean Power Plan will literally bring a breath of fresh air to minority and low-income communities that are plagued with higher rates of cancer, respiratory diseases such as asthma and other pollution-related illness”.
In the three-page letter, McConnell reviewed a list of reasons for what he said was the plan’s questionable legal underpinnings and urged states to “carefully review the consequences before signing up for this deeply misguided plan”. Even the enhanced renewable goals are “consistent with historical deployment patterns”. EPA has consistently touted its intention to allow states to engage in interstate emission credit trading as a means of complying with the Clean Power Plan. One oft-cited benefit of such switching is a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
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A more pressing question is whether a judge will issue a stay – essentially putting the regulations on hold while both sides’ lawyers duke it out – or let them go into effect, forcing power plants to make immediate changes. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones and other writers argued that I was being too harsh, because the reductions over the last decade were expanded by a recession and a fracking boom, and because coal retirements will be harder now that the oldest and most obvious targets have been retired.
