How Much Cleaner Will Obama’s Climate Rules Make Your State?

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate strategy—a plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants. The main takeaway was that by 2030 the regulations will cut these emissions, the biggest single driver of global warming, by 30 percent compared to 2005 levels. But under the hood, things get a little more complex.

Rather than a consistent national standard, the proposed rule sets a different standard for every state, based on the EPA’s assessment of what each state can realistically achieve using existing technology at a reasonable cost. The goal applies to a state’s carbon intensity, the measure of how much carbon pollution comes from each unit of electricity produced in that state, rather than total carbon emissions. States like Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, rely heavily on coal power and have a higher carbon intensity than states like California that are more energy-efficient and have more renewable energy. By 2030, each state will be required to meet a carbon intensity target lower than where it is today; how much lower, exactly, depends on what the EPA thinks the state can pull off.

States will have broad leeway to devise individual plans to meet their targets, which could include installing air-scrubbing technology on plants themselves, adopting more robust energy efficiency standards, or switching from coal to cleaner sources like natural gas or renewables.

Here’s a ranking of which states will have to shrink their carbon footprint the most: