October 31, 2017
On October 16, 2017 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published in the Federal Register a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan – the Obama administration’s centerpiece regulation to fight climate change according to an October 4, 2017 Reuters report. EPA’s proposal to repeal has a comment period that ends December 15, 2017.
The decision marks the agency’s first formal step to sweep away the rule intended to cut carbon emissions from power plants, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March launching the EPA’s review.
The Republican president has expressed doubts about the science of climate change and has blamed former Democratic President Barack Obama’s efforts to cut carbon emissions for hurting the coal mining and oil drilling industries.
The Clean Power Plan, or CPP, was challenged in court by 27 states after Obama’s administration launched it in 2015. It is currently suspended by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which set a deadline of October 20 for a status report from the EPA on how it plans to proceed.
The CPP was designed to lower carbon emissions from existing U.S. power plants by 2030 to 32 percent below 2005 levels, requiring each state to adopt its own plans to achieve individualized targets.
It was seen as the main tool for the United States to meet emissions cuts it promised in the Paris Climate Agreement, a global pact to fight climate change.
The Trump administration has announced it will withdraw the United States from the Paris deal – which it said would cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars without tangible environmental benefits – in a process that could take years.
Janet McCabe, who headed the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under Obama, said an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking could take years – meaning the replacement for CPP could be a long way off, or possibly never emerge. “It certainly will draw the process out,” she said.
Some industry groups want a replacement to give utilities regulatory certainty and avoid possible
Obama’s greenhouse gas regulations were based on the broad scientific consensus that carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels are driving global climate change, triggering flooding and droughts while making powerful storms more frequent
What this means to you
The Trump Administration has published a plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan in the Federal Register with a comment period ending December 15, 2017. The proposed rulemaking could take years and replacement could be a long way off, or possible never emerge.
MIRATECH can help
Contact MIRATECH for help bringing stationary engines into compliance.