Leading up to the meeting, the president recently announced a “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) to curb carbon dioxide emissions from America’s power plants. Such an effort may bolster the president’s credentials as a climate leader. But his plan requires a staggering transformation of America’s power sector that is simply too costly to implement.
The problem, as legal experts are now pointing out, is that the EPA’s plan oversteps federal authority. Harvard University Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who is generally a supporter of the president’s agenda, told Congress earlier this year that that the plan exceeds the EPA’s authority under federal law. According to Professor Tribe, the CPP makes states unacceptably subservient to Washington on energy and environmental matters because it “invades state regulatory control in an unprecedented manner” that “raises grave constitutional questions that the Act must be construed to avoid.”
Under the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), states are now required to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the electricity sector by 32 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2030. Specifically, each state must submit a compliance plan by 2018, with interim targets set for 2022, and final targets in place by 2030. And surprisingly, his plan could draw criticism from both sides of the climate debate.
For those worried about “climate change,” coal is a convenient target. Unfortunately, a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shutter hundreds of domestic, coal-fired power plants has been hastily thrown together, with no confirmed alternatives for steady, reliable power generation.
