This Greentech Media article looks at the newly released Trump EPA plan to regulate carbon emissions that replaces the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. AEE's Caitlin Marquis, manager of federal and state policy at Advanced Energy Economy is quoted multiple times throughout. Link to the full article here. Excerpts below:
The Trump administration on Tuesday introduced a plan for the nation’s coal plants that loosens regulations set out by the previous administration.
Under the Affordable Clean Energy rule, a rework of President Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan (CPP), states will have autonomy to decide how to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants on a plant-by-plant basis through heat-rate efficiency improvements rather than working to achieve overall emissions cuts. There is no base requirement for states to reduce emissions. The plan also allows power plants to circumvent pollution reviews that accompany facility modifications that the industry says are expensive.
Despite the objections, experts suggest the majority of states are on track to meet the targeted emissions cuts, 32 percent below 2005 levels, by 2030. Today the U.S. is currently at about 28 percent below 2005 levels, according to Jeff Deyette, director of state policy and analysis at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy program. The Rhodium Group projects that without any regulations on carbon dioxide, emissions would decrease 30 to 39 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Even many of the states behind the legal challenge, at least nine of the 27 according to 2017 data from the Rhodium Group, will meet their stated CPP goals, helped along by investments in clean energy and natural gas.
“The Clean Power Plan itself was actually never unachievable from the perspective of where the market was actually going,” said Caitlin Marquis, manager of federal and state policy at Advanced Energy Economy.
Link to the full GTM article here.