A new plan unveiled on 21 August by the Trump administration ― the so-called Clean and Affordable Energy plan ― is set to dismantle Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan, which was the first to stipulate national US pollution limits for coal power plants. Obama’s plan has never been implemented because it was blocked by the US Supreme Court in 2016 and has remained bogged down in the federal courts ever since.
The new proposal was devised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is the realisation of a long-promised plan to relax federal limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. At a press conference on 21 August, Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the EPA, said, “The era of top own one-size fits all federal mandates is over,” and insist the new plan will continue to drive down emissions.
The new system will give states the freedom to come up with their own goals for reducing emissions, with an emphasis on energy-efficient technologies to be can be adopted by individual power plants. In contrast, the Obama plan would have required states to collectively reduce emissions thereby promoting energy efficiency, renewables, and other low-carbon energy technologies
The new EPA plan has been met with outrage from scientists, environmentalists, and progressive states but was welcomed by the coal industry, as it will ease existing pressure to reduce emissions and boost coal industry’s wealth over the next decade. Environmentalists have dubbed the new plan the “dirty power scam,” and according to Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, “Trump’s latest scheme to bail out the coal industry is a disaster for public health and the climate.”
The EPA documents suggest the release of more soot and smog-forming chemicals as a result of the new policy will kill up to 1,400 Americans a year by 2030, in addition to 40,000 cases of worsening asthma and 60,000 lost school days. Whereas a similar analysis last year showed the clean power plan would have prevented around 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2030.
Before the Clean Power Plan was impeded by the courts, the US was seemingly on a trajectory toward meeting or exceeding the plan’s goals with very little economic effects, mainly due to an increasing trend towards cleaner energy sources in many sectors. According to the US Energy Information Administration, a federal agency that tracks energy trends, CO2 emissions in the power sector were down by almost 28% in 2017 compared to 2005.
Despite Trump’s pledge to leave the Paris agreement, the plan is thought to be part of an effort to meet its international climate change goals by lowering emissions. Should effective plans be implemented by all states, the new proposed is surmised to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by up to 1.5% by 2030, well below the 32% of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Although, the Trump administration argues that these reductions will be “comparable” owing to changes in the energy market.
In terms of the economic impact, according to Resources For the Future (RFF), an environmental think tank in Washington DC, Obama’s plan would have increased the average price electricity price paid by consumers by a mere 1%. However, more significant economic effects would have been seen in regions heavily dependent on coal mining and coal-fired electricity, including Appalachia and parts of the Midwest.
With the new plan, if the efficiency of some individual power plants could be improved by even a few per cent, this could bring down the price of coal-fired power, however, if the energy provided by coal-powered plants replaces the energy currently being generated by natural gas and renewables, it could potentially increase emissions.
Trump’s proposal is set to replace the Clean Power Plan once it survives the certain legal battle it would undoubtedly face. Public comments will be accepted by the EPA for the next 60 days before finalising the proposal.
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