COLUMBUS, Ohio – The public can now comment on the Trump administration’s proposal to replace the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era rule aimed at drastically cutting carbon emissions from coal power plants.
Under what’s being called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, or ACE, states would develop their own reduction goals and submit their plans within three years to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dan Sawmiller, Ohio Energy Policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the new proposal nixes the Clean Power Plan’s specific goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in each state.
“As of 2017, Ohio was already cutting carbon emissions by nearly 17 percent compared to 2012, so this is really an unfortunate step backward that means more carbon pollution, more climate catastrophe and a more dangerous world for our future,” he states.
Ohio ranks 11th nationally in coal production. The 2015 Clean Power Plan was put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court and has not yet taken effect.
Public comments on ACE will be accepted through Oct. 30.
Janet McCabe, a senior law fellow at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, is a former EPA assistant administrator who worked on the Clean Power Plan.
She’s concerned the new proposal would delay implementing meaningful air quality improvements in a number of ways, including changing the way an older coal plant’s remaining life is factored into how it should be handled.
“The proposal gives the states, really, ultimate discretion to require nothing at all,” she points out. “What this rule would allow is for a state to say, ‘Well, given the remaining useful life of this plant, it doesn’t make sense to require it to do anything.'”
Sawmiller adds that clean and renewable energy sources will be the losers should ACE be approved, as the proposed rule pits certain power plants against others.
“It could make other struggling coal plants in the region like in Indiana, for example, more competitive, which would out compete Ohio’s generators, forcing the state of Ohio to rely more on electricity imports, and those imports would be more coal-heavy,” he points out.
He says the Affordable Clean Energy plan would cut emissions, at most, to 1.5 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The Clean Power Plan was projected to cut emissions by 19 percent.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2018.
The battle of the subsidies! The one that gouges taxpayers & consumers most wins! Wind, solar, and nuclear power require subsidies to continue to exist, much less to expand. Only natural gas & coal can produce reliable and affordable electric power without subsidies. Capital replacement allowances like depreciation & depletion are not subsidies. Every business uses them, and they require a taxpayer to invest its own capital and earn taxable profits.
Others have shown the likely causes of climate change, and they DO NOT include human use of fossil fuels. There is no empirical evidence that fossil fuels use affects climate. Likely and well-documented causes include sunspot cycles, earth/sun orbital changes, cosmic ray effects on clouds and tectonic plate activity. Full implementation of the Paris Treaty is now estimated to cost $50 trillion to $100 trillion by 2030–$6,667-$13,333 per human being. And will not affect climate at all.
I make a different argument here. It regards where atmospheric carbon dioxide goes. And it does go somewhere. Nature converts CO2 to calcite (limestone). Climate change is a false premise for regulating carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate change may or may not be occurring, but is is surely NOT caused by human fossil fuels use. These changes in temperature cause changes in ambient CO2, with an estimated 800 year time lag.
Here’s why. Fossil fuels emit only 3% of total CO2 emissions. 95% comes from rotting vegetation. All the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere is promptly converted in the oceans to calcite (limestone) and other carbonates, mostly through biological paths. CO2 + CaO => CaCO3. The conversion rate increases with increasing CO2 partial pressure. A dynamic equilibrium-seeking mechanism.
99.84% of all carbon on earth is already sequestered as sediments in the lithosphere. The lithosphere is a massive hungry carbon sink that converts ambient CO2 to carbonate almost as soon as it is emitted. All living or dead organic matter (plants, animals, microbes etc. amount to only 0.00033% of the total carbon mass on earth. Ambient CO2 is only 0.00255%.
A modern coal power plant emits few air effluents except water vapor and carbon dioxide. Coal remains the lowest cost and most reliable source of electric energy, along with natural gas. Coal has always competed effectively with natural gas. Illinois Basin coal now costs less than 1/3 of natural gas at their respective sources. Natural gas is less competitive with coal today than it was in 1995.