The revised plan will aim to cut carbon emissions from the power sector by 32% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
Advertisement
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.
What changed in the plan?
Politicians and analysts said Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which faces fierce opposition from Republican quarters, should spur the worldwide effort to pin down a climate-rescue pact by year-end. Also, they say it will be very expensive to do.
“In the proposal we looked at each state in isolation”, said Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s office of air and radiation. “That’s why when it was first announced, thirty-two states strongly opposed the rule and fifteen states, including South Carolina, challenged it in court”.
Obama argued, if the US does not take steps, other countries would not follow through.
Republican lawmakers in coal-producing states like Texas and others in Congress are lining up against the plan, casting it as a job killer.
“The final rule released today is twice as bad for Kansas as the proposed rule released last summer”, Brownback said.
“Nevada has been ahead of this curve for a long time”, said Jennifer Taylor, executive director of the nonpartisan Clean Energy Project. “There is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change”.
Under theses new EPA guidelines states will have until 2018 to create and submit a final plan for reaching emissions goals.
Emission standards plan: the state places requirements directly on all its electricity generating units to ensure performance of each contributes to meeting emissions targets.
But between now and the beginning of the compliance period, which starts in 2022, states must come up with plans to meet the new standards.
One of the lawmaker’s leading the fight is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has vowed to do “everything I can to fight” the initiative.
Advertisement
“Now, what EPA has done is put the regulatory burden directly on the power plants themselves to cut their pollution”, she says. The final regulations instead force the states to use renewable energy and energy efficiency programs through a cap-and-trade system of buying and selling credits for pollution.
