Climate science, policy, politics, and action
National, congressional, community, and faith leaders will share ideas on how we can work together and ensure the Clean Power Plan creates health, wealth, and opportunity for low-income communities and communities of color.
From 9 to 11 am, at the National Press Club located at 529 14th Street NW in Washington, D.C.
Originally published at The Jacobin.
At the beginning of August, President Obama unveiled with great fanfare the “Clean Power Plan,” a “Landmark Action to Protect Public Health, Reduce Energy Bills for Households and Businesses, Create American Jobs, and Bring Clean Power to Communities across the Country.”
Stripping away the poll-tested language, the president was announcing — after epic delays — EPA regulations for carbon-dioxide pollution from existing power plants, finally fulfilling a 2000 George W. Bush campaign pledge. The proposed rule’s compliance period will begin in 2022.
From a policy perspective, the proposed rule is a perfect distillation of the Obama administration’s approach to governance: politically rational incrementalism that reinforces the existing power structures and is grossly insufficient given the scope of the problem.
The information necessary to understand the rule is impressively buried on the EPA website amid “fact sheets” that list out-of-context factoids and fail to cite references from the one-hundred-plus-page technical documents or ZIP files of modeling runs. The structure of the plan is complex (for example, states can choose to comply with “rate-based” pollution-intensity targets or “mass-based” total-pollution targets) and carefully designed to satisfy a wide range of stakeholders.
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who
argued the losing side of Bush v. Gore, is now defending the coal
industry against the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned rules for
greenhouse pollution from power plants. In a
submission to
the EPA’s comment period for the Clean Power
Plan,
Tribe and Peabody Energy’s notorious
climate-science-denying
lobbyist Fred Palmer argued that coal is a “bedrock” of the United
States economy.
In short, coal has been a bedrock component of our economy and energy policy for decades. The Proposed Rule, which manifestly proceeds on the opposite premise, thus represents a dramatic change in directions from previous Democratic and Republican administrations.
“It is a remarkable example of executive overreach and an administrative agency’s assertion of power beyond its statutory authority,” Tribe and Peabody Energy wrote, in strident language reminiscent of Fox News rhetoric. “Indeed, the Proposed Rule raises serious constitutional questions.”
Tribe and Peabody put great weight in the past history of coal’s importance to the U.S. economy, as opposed to its future. Hillary Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter get special mention.
Both Democrats and Republicans should stand in strong support of the rule of law. And both Democratic and Republican Administrations have promoted the prudent use of domestic coal in order to reduce dependence on imported oil. In contrast, the Proposed Rule will require a dramatic decline in coal-fired generation of electricity, in order to implement EPA’s system of state-by-state mandates. In fact, under EPA’s plan, the agency envisions that coal generation would be eliminated altogether in 12 states. The Proposed Rule thus reverses policies that reach back to John F. Kennedy. As Hillary Clinton observed in 2007, “I think you have got to admit that coal — of which we have a great and abundant supply in America — is not going away.”
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the William S. Moorhead Federal Building, Room 1310, 1000 Liberty Avenue.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Denver, Colorado, in EPA’s Region 8 Building, 1595 Wynkoop Street.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. (local) and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.
A public hearing on the EPA’s draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303.
The hearing will convene at 9:00 a.m. and end at 8:00 p.m.
Please contact Ms. Pamela Garrett at 919-541-7966 or at [email protected] to register to speak at one of the hearings. The last day to pre-register in advance to speak at the hearings will be Friday, July 25, 2014.
The full text of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s speech introducing the draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, June 2, 2014.
About a month ago, I took a trip to the Cleveland
Clinic. I met a lot of great people, but one stood out—even if he needed
to stand on a chair to do it. Parker Frey is 10 years old. He’s
struggled with severe asthma all his life. His mom said despite his
challenges, Parker’s a tough, active kid—and a stellar hockey player.
But sometimes, she says, the air is too dangerous for him to play outside. In the United States of America, no parent should ever have that worry.
That’s why EPA exists. Our job, directed by our laws, reaffirmed by our courts, is to protect public health and the environment. Climate change, fueled by carbon pollution, supercharges risks not just to our health, but to our communities, our economy, and our way of life. That’s why EPA is delivering on a vital piece of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
I want to thank Janet McCabe, our Acting Assistant Administrator at the Office of Air and Radiation, and the entire EPA team who worked so hard to deliver this proposal. They should be very proud of their work; I know I am.
Today, EPA is proposing a Clean Power Plan that will cut carbon pollution from our power sector, by using cleaner energy sources, and cutting energy waste.
Although we limit pollutants like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic, currently, there are no limits on carbon pollution from power plants, our nation’s largest source. For the sake of our families’ health and our kids’ future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate. When we do, we’ll turn climate risk into business opportunity, we’ll spur innovation and investment, and we’ll build a world-leading clean energy economy.
The science is clear. The risks are clear. And the high costs of climate inaction keep piling up.
The long-awaited Environmental Protection Agency rule
for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants will seek a 30
percent reduction from the 2005
peak, the
Wall Street Journal’s Amy Harder
reports.
Half of that reduction has already been achieved in the seven years
between 2005 and 2012, where only carbon dioxide emissions are
concerned. The draft rule is expected to be unveiled Monday, with a year
delay before finalization in 2015. States will be expected to submit
compliance plans in June 2016, the final year of the Obama
administration.
Because coal-fired power plants emit three-quarters of the greenhouse pollution from electricity generation in the United States, the rule is expected to impact the aging coal-fired fleet of plants, which also cause the lion’s share of traditional air pollution from the country’s power plants.
Coral Davenport of the New York Times summarizes the draft rule:
Under the proposal to be unveiled on Monday, states will be given a wide menu of policy options to achieve the pollution cuts. Rather than immediately shutting down coal plants, states will be allowed to reduce emissions by making changes across their electricity systems – by installing new wind and solar generation, energy-efficiency technology and by starting or joining state and regional “cap-and-trade” programs, in which states agree to cap carbon pollution and buy and sell permits to pollute.
The proposed rule calls for most of the reduction to happen by 2020, with a 25 percent cut from 2005 levels (11 percent cut from 2012) by then.
Carbon-dioxide pollution from electricity generation is already down 15 percent from 2005. This reduction has come primarily from a switch to natural gas and renewables. Any reduction in overall greenhouse pollution from a switch from coal to natural gas requires low levels of methane leakage, a requirement that has not been clearly shown.
Interestingly, the reduction in greenhouse pollution from the proposed rule is about one-third greater than the footprint of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Electricity generation is responsible for one-third of U.S. domestic greenhouse pollution. The announced target represents a reduction of 340 million metric tons of CO2 from 2012 levels, five percent of the United States’ total greenhouse pollution that year. That cut is about double the annual 120-200 MMT/yr climate footprint of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The total pollution saved over 2016-2030 due to the rule would be thirty percent greater than the footprint of the tar-sands crude carried by the pipeline.
The international benchmark for greenhouse pollution is 1990 levels. Measured against 1990’s pollution levels, the proposed rule represents a one percent reduction in power plant emissions by 2020, and a 7 percent cut by 2030 (a two percent cut from total U.S. 1990 greenhouse pollution).
The process for establishing the rule was begun by the Obama administration in March 2011, years after the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision by the Supreme Court overturning the EPA’s 2003 rejection of greenhouse regulation.
Update: The EPA has released what it’s calling the Clean Power Plan. The EPA estimates the rule will “cut particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent as a co-benefit” and “shrink electricity bills roughly 8 percent by increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand in the electricity system.”
The
League of Women Voters has launched a major, nationwide campaign in
defense of the EPA’s work to give Americans
clean air. The People Not
Polluters campaign asks Americans
and their elected officials to join the Clean Air Promise:
I promise to protect America’s children and families from dangerous air pollution. Because toxics and pollutants such as mercury, smog, carbon, and soot, cause thousands of hospital visits, asthma attacks, and even deaths, I will support clean air policies and other protections that scientists and public health experts have recommended to the EPA to safeguard our air quality.
Watch the campaign spot:
LWV is mobilizing its members to tell personal stories of the cost of asthma for children and families, including outreach to vulnerable populations like seniors, Latinos, and African Americans.
Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.
In January, Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal. Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated:
U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.
Burr’s bill has fifteen co-sponsors, all of them deniers of the threat of global warming pollution, a top EPA priority: Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), John Thune (R-S.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), David Vitter (R-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Mike Lee (R-Utah).