New York Times - Lisa Friedman | Brad Plumer
 |
| Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. chief, at the White House in June.
Credit
Al Drago/The New York Times |
WASHINGTON
— The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would take
formal steps to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature policy to curb
greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight
over the future of America’s efforts to tackle global warming.
At
an event in eastern Kentucky, Scott Pruitt, the head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, said that his predecessors had departed
from regulatory norms in crafting the Clean Power Plan, which was
finalized in 2015 and would have pushed states to move away from coal in
favor of sources of electricity that produce fewer carbon emissions.
“The
war on coal is over,” Mr. Pruitt said. “Tomorrow in Washington, D.C., I
will be signing a proposed rule to roll back the Clean Power Plan. No
better place to make that announcement than Hazard, Kentucky.”
The
repeal proposal, which will be filed in the Federal Register on
Tuesday, fulfills a promise President Trump made to eradicate his
predecessor’s environmental legacy. Eliminating the Clean Power Plan
makes it less likely
that the United States can fulfill its promise as part of the Paris
climate agreement to ratchet down emissions that are warming the planet
and contributing to heat waves and sea-level rise. Mr. Trump has
vowed to abandon that international accord.
It
also is a personal triumph for Mr. Pruitt, who as Oklahoma attorney
general helped lead more than two dozen states in challenging the rule
in the courts. In announcing the repeal, Mr. Pruitt made many of the
same arguments that he had made for years to Congress and in lawsuits:
that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in an effort
to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. (Last year, the
Supreme Court
blocked the rule from taking effect while courts assessed those lawsuits.)
A leaked draft of the repeal proposal
asserts that the country would save $33 billion by not complying with
the regulation and rejects the health benefits the Obama administration
had calculated from the original rule.
Coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants are responsible for
about one-third of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. When the Clean Power Plan
was unveiled
in 2015, it was expected to cut power sector emissions 32 percent by
2030, relative to 2005. While many states are already shifting away from
coal power for economic reasons, experts say scrapping the rule could
slow that transition.
Environmental
groups and several states plan to challenge the repeal proposal in
federal courts, arguing against Mr. Pruitt’s move on both scientific and
economic grounds.
Industry groups cheered the announcement, but
have also indicated
that they would prefer that Mr. Pruitt replace the Clean Power Plan
with a new, more modest regulation on power plants in order to blunt any
court challenges. The E.P.A. is still required to regulate
greenhouse-gas emissions because of a 2009 legal opinion known as the
endangerment finding.
“We have always believed that there is a better way to approach greenhouse gas emissions reductions,”
Karen A. Harbert,
the president of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute,
said in a statement. “We welcome the opportunity for business to be at
the table with the E.P.A. and other stakeholders to develop an approach
that lowers emissions, preserves America’s energy advantage and respects
the bounds of the Clean Air Act.”
How does Trump plan to roll back the Clean Power Plan?
In
order to regulate pollution from existing power plants, the E.P.A. has
to set goals for each state based on what is technically feasible and
cost-effective. Under the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration
set targets
by assuming utilities could improve the efficiency of their coal
plants, shift from coal to cleaner natural gas and add more renewable
energy to their grids.
But
Mr. Obama’s approach was controversial, because the E.P.A. assumed
utilities could reduce emissions at individual plants by taking actions
outside of those plants — say, by replacing coal plants with wind farms
elsewhere. Industry groups and more than two dozen states
challenged this move in court, arguing that the E.P.A. can look only at cleanup measures that can be undertaken at the plants themselves.
Mr.
Pruitt is proposing to repeal the Clean Power Plan on this basis. He
also argued that the Obama administration overstated the benefits of its
rule by factoring in the gains from curbing global warming in other
countries as well as from reducing harmful air pollutants other than
carbon dioxide.
If
Mr. Pruitt does end up pursuing a replacement rule, it would almost
certainly be confined to inside-the-fenceline measures, like upgrading
coal-plant boilers. Previous E.P.A. analyses
found that such upgrades would lead to a roughly 4 percent increase in efficiency at coal plants.
What does this mean for emissions?
While
the repeal of the Clean Power Plan offers a reprieve for America’s coal
industry, it is unlikely to halt the decline of coal altogether. Even
in the absence of the rule, many utilities around the country
have opted to shift
to natural gas, wind and solar, driven by cost concerns and state-level
policies. Many states, like California and New York, are already moving
ahead of the targets set by the Clean Power Plan
as they develop their own climate policies.
Document
The Trump Administration’s Proposal to Repeal the Clean Power Plan
The Trump administration will file a proposal in the Federal Register to repeal the Clean Power Plan, arguing that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. OPEN Document
Gov.
John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, noted that his state has
plans to exceed the goals that had been set under the Clean Power Plan
because the state is closing coal plants early and developing jobs in
wind and other renewables.
“We
have dramatically cleaner air and we are saving money. My question to
the E.P.A. would be, ‘Which part of that don’t you like?’ ” Mr.
Hickenlooper said.
A
new analysis
by the research firm Rhodium Group estimated that United States
electricity emissions are currently on track to fall 27 to 35 percent
below 2005 levels by 2030, roughly in the range of what the Clean Power
Plan originally envisioned, even if the regulation is repealed.
But
John Larsen, the author of the Rhodium Group analysis, estimated that
if Mr. Obama’s policies had remained in place, as many as 21 states
would have had to make deeper reductions than they are currently
expected to do without the rule — including Texas, West Virginia,
Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and emissions most likely would
have fallen further than the 32 percent originally envisioned.
“So for certain states,” Mr. Larsen wrote, “today’s announcement is a big deal.”
Experts
also note that the Clean Power Plan would have prevented a rebound in
coal use in case natural gas unexpectedly became more expensive or
various policies to promote renewable energy were blunted. The repeal
comes on the heels of a proposal by the Department of Energy to
subsidize coal and nuclear plants by revamping electricity markets.
Jody
Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law
School, said the Energy Department proposal combined with the Clean
Power Plan repeal signals the Trump administration is putting its thumb
on the scale in favor of fossil fuels.
“You
see a pretty powerful message. Disavow any effort to control greenhouse
gases in the power sector, and instead, intervene in the market to
promote coal. It’s a wow,” she said.
What happens next?
Mr.
Pruitt’s proposal for repeal will now have to go through a formal
public-comment period before being finalized, a process that could take
months. Mr. Pruitt will also ask the public for comment on what a
replacement rule should look like, but the E.P.A. has not offered a
timeline.
Environmental groups and Democratic-controlled states are expected to challenge these moves on multiple fronts.
“Every
step of this, from the repeal to the replacement, will involve a lot of
time-consuming litigation, and we could ultimately see this end up in
the Supreme Court,” said Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental
law at New York University.
That
raises the question of whether the Trump administration can craft and
finalize a replacement rule by the 2020 election. Failure to do so, some
industry groups worry, could allow a new administration to start over
and impose a more stringent climate plan on power plants.
Partly for that reason, many states are already preparing for the prospect of tougher carbon regulations down the road.
Consider Arkansas, one of the states that challenged the Clean Power Plan in court.
Ted J. Thomas,
the chairman of the Arkansas Public Service commission, says that his
state is nonetheless in the process of shifting from coal to cheaper
natural gas. The initial rule also convinced the state to start
exploring clean-energy options, like expanding wind power, promoting the
use of smart meters, and developing a working group to look at carbon
capture technology for coal plants.
“Even
if they repeal the Clean Power Plan, or replace it with something that
doesn’t require us to do very much, you still have to reckon with the
fact that ultimately regulations on carbon are coming,” Mr. Thomas said.
“So we need to develop options to deal with that other than sticking
our heads in the sand and hoping we can just file lawsuits forever.”
“You can either be prepared or unprepared,” he added, “and that’s a pretty simple choice.”
Links
