A new draft climate rule from the Environmental Protection Agency proposing new standards for fossil fuel power plants has been met with intense pushback.
The climate rule drafted by the EPA was released last week, revealing a requirement for plants burning fossil fuels to make steep cuts to emissions by sometime between 2035 and 2040.
Fossil fuel power plants that agree to close in the early 2030s would avoid almost all of the pollution-reduction guidelines outlined in the EPA’s climate rule.
The EPA declared that these changes would cut the nation’s carbon emissions by roughly 600 million metric tons, generating savings of $85 billion through benefits to the climate and public health over the next two decades.
“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan explained in a recent news release.
Most of the electricity consumed by Americans today — approximately 60% in 2022 — is produced from fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Most fossil-fuel-fired power plants burned coal (19.5%) and natural gas (~40%) in 2022.
As such, the latest climate rule draft proposes a highly ambitious target with enormous implications for future energy production in the U.S.
Alongside this latest initiative that would favor renewables like solar and wind as energy sources, the EPA revealed last April another proposal aimed at curbing air pollution and accelerating the nation’s transition to electric vehicles (EVs), as The Dallas Express reported.
It would require that over half of the new vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric by 2030 while imposing new emission standards for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles manufactured from 2027.
The transportation industry is the foremost generator of greenhouse emissions in the country, followed by the energy industry, according to Politico.
The latest climate rule proposals are part of the Biden administration’s broader strategy to green the U.S. economy. This includes actively promoting electric cars, subsidizing renewable power sources, implementing stricter regulations on household appliances, and requiring greater transparency of corporations’ greenhouse gas emissions.
These efforts have not been met without resistance from both sides of the political spectrum.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has already announced that he plans to refuse every proffered EPA nominee until the agency agrees to “halt their government overreach,” according to E&E News. He further referred to the agency officials as “hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability.”
Manchin is chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where he often defends coal — the lifeblood of his state’s economy.
The top Republican on that same committee, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), has also pushed back against Biden’s climate policy.
“There’s a potential catastrophe coming because Biden’s administration is retiring current sources of energy much, much faster than you can get the new sources — the renewable energy they want — online,” Barrasso suggested, according to Politico.
Industry stakeholders have also criticized the moves, with Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, calling it “an onslaught” that is “designed to shut down the coal fleet prematurely,” according to PBS.
While the new climate rule will eventually have to face judicial review, the EPA’s Regan is confident that it will pass.
“[The climate rule] has limits and guidelines that follow EPA’s traditional approach under the Clean Air Act to cut and control pollution from stationary sources,” Regan said, according to Politico. “So we feel really good that we are well within those bounds.”
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