Tag Archives: Clean Power

22 states sue the Trump administration over its climate ‘plan’

by LoriMajeski Posted on August 13, 2019

Twenty-two states and seven cities sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan for power plants. The lawsuit alleges that the so-called Affordable Clean Energy rule would accelerate the impacts of the climate crisis and impose health and safety risks on Americans.

The challenge — led by the states of New York, Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia — comes two months after the EPA finalized the plan. The new rule replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that set ambitious goals aimed at weakening carbon emissions coming from power plants. It gives a bit more elbow room to coal-powered stations and allows older ones to stay open longer.

“The science is indisputable; our climate is changing,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a tweet. “Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Weather is becoming more and more extreme. That’s why we are fighting back.”

A recent Harvard study shows that the EPA’s estimated carbon reductions from power plants under the new rule (which are pretty minor) wouldn’t hold up under changing market conditions. In addition, researchers say that the agency underestimated the health effects the rule would have in some states and overestimated its overall economic benefits.

Not that the EPA’s own projections looked pretty. The administration’s analysis found that the ACE rule, compared to the Clean Power Plan, would lead to 1,400 premature deaths by 2030 and would cost Americans $1.4 billion more per year than it saved.

Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. increased by roughly 3.5 percent last year. The Harvard analysis suggests that Trump’s new rule could drive emissions even higher by failing to nail down target reductions. Meanwhile, it may result in more cases of respiratory illness, heart attacks, asthma, and early death due to exposure to particulate matter and toxic air pollutants.

The new lawsuit parallels the Republican-led effort to stop the Clean Power Plan in 2015, when 24 states led by Oklahoma sued the Obama administration over the rule. The Supreme Court hit pause on the plan a year later. Soon after President Trump took office, the EPA started crafting a Trump-friendly alternative to the plan.

If you compare the states that sued over the Obama-era rule in 2015 and those that are suing the Trump administration now, it’s no surprise that you’ll see a partisan divide. Only Colorado, Michigan, and North Carolina were part of both lawsuits.

An EPA spokesperson told the New York Times, “EPA worked diligently to ensure we produced a solid rule, that we believe will be upheld in the courts, unlike the previous Administration’s Clean Power Plan.” Only time will tell — it’s possible that the challenge could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Continued here:

22 states sue the Trump administration over its climate ‘plan’

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 22 states sue the Trump administration over its climate ‘plan’

Trump’s power plan proposal is “about coal at all costs”

by DarellPinto Posted on August 21, 2018

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

When President Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan in the East Room of the White House three years ago, he called it “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.” Today, that plan, which would have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 19 percent in 2030 relative to 2005 levels, will be replaced by the Trump administration’s “Affordable Clean Energy” proposal, which will give states more authority to craft regulations for coal-burning power plants and replaces the “overly prescriptive and burdensome” requirements in the CPP with what they describe as “on-site, heat-rate efficiency improvements.”

These regulations are expected to only decrease CO2 levels by a fraction of the amount that were anticipated under Obama’s plan. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged this will lead to hundreds of more deaths each year, along with sharp increases in the number of hospital admissions, lost work days, and school absences because of the health impacts of dirtier air. Not to mention the fact that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will further accelerate global warming.

“The ACE Rule would restore the rule of law and empower states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide modern, reliable, and affordable energy for all Americans,” said EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler in a statement. Wheeler and EPA air pollution chief Bill Wehrum are both former lobbyists for coal-producing companies that benefit from the agency’s new rule.

The Clean Power Plan faced powerful opposition from nearly the moment it was signed. Several coal-producing states, including Texas and West Virginia, led a group of industry stakeholders to ask the Supreme Court to stay the CPP in January 2016 pending an appeals court’s ruling. The Court agreed to temporarily block the plan and it has been suspended ever since.

Republicans, state environmental officials, and fossil fuel industry titans have urged the Trump administration to replace the Clean Power Plan for the past several months, citing its costs and dubious legality under the Clean Air Act. All 11 Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wrote to former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in January asking him to eliminate the rule. “Not only is the CPP bad policy, it is unlawful,” they wrote. “Congress did not give EPA the authority to transform our energy sector.”

Former agency officials blasted the proposal in a call with reporters hours before the EPA unveiled ACE. Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator who developed the CPP under Obama, called its replacement “galling and appalling.”

“This is all about coal at all costs,” she said. “They are continuing to play to their base and following industry’s playbook step by step.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont and a member of the Environment and Public Works committee, tweeted after the announcement, “Trump is actively destroying the planet in order to enrich his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry. We must fight back.”

The savings highlighted in Trump’s proposal — $400 million in annual net benefits with a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 1.5 percent by 2030 — include a severe human cost, which the agency mentions in the fine print of its 289-page impact analysis.

Because of an increase in a tiny air pollutant known as PM 2.5, which contributes to smog and is linked to asthma and heart disease, the EPA predicts between 470 to 1,400 more deaths and thousands more lost days of school. Depending on how aggressively states make efficiency standards for individual power plants, those numbers could decrease.

“The Clean Power Plan would have reduced particle pollution along with the CO2 benefits by 25 percent by 2030. And we know reduction in particle exposure means saved lives,” said Janet McCabe, the former head of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. The EPA deferred a request for comment on former agency officials’ criticism of the Trump plan to an agency press release about the proposal.

The United States’ level of CO2 emissions actually decreased in 2017, but experts fear that a weakened regulatory scheme with decentralized goals could hike up rates of pollution nationwide. “Environmental regulation in many cases is one of the leading causes of the decline in emissions that we observed over the past twenty years,” said Reed Walker, an associate professor at UC Berkeley who co-authored a recent study that found regulation to be a key factor in reducing emissions in the manufacturing sector, even with increasing output. Under Wheeler and former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, the federal government has started the process of rolling back at least 76 environmental regulations, according to the New York Times. Many of these rules include protections to wildlife habitats and restrictions aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump, who will celebrate the Affordable Clean Energy proposal at a rally in West Virginia, has propped up coal miners with several regulatory decisions. In June, he ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to bail out struggling coal-fueled power plants and, last month, the EPA finalized a rule that relaxes the requirements for storing toxic coal ash. He also announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

Once the Trump administration’s proposal is formally published, members of the public will have 60 days to comment on it. The EPA also plans to hold a formal hearing.

Link: 

Trump’s power plan proposal is “about coal at all costs”

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, global climate change, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s power plan proposal is “about coal at all costs”

4 ways the Republican tax plan could harm the planet.

by BevMichael Posted on December 1, 2017

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s strategy to bring the public discussion, which ended Wednesday, “to the heart of coal country to hear from those most impacted” backfired when a few legacy coal miners like Nick Mullins of Kentucky came to testify.

“I don’t want [my son] to be a sixth-generation coal miner,” Mullins said, adding that the plan could lead to diverse job opportunities that won’t endanger his family’s health. When Obama announced the Clean Power Plan in 2015, the EPA estimated it could prevent up to 3,600 premature deaths and 90,000 childhood asthma attacks.

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA to stop the plan’s implementation. The rules would have forced states to cut emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It was a big piece of the United States’ compliance with the Paris climate accord, which President Trump now plans to leave.

“As long as I can draw a breath, I’m going to keep working to fight climate change and protect the land and country I love,” said Stanley Sturgill, a Kentucky resident living with black lung disease after more than 40 years as a coal miner. “For the sake of my grandchildren and yours, I call on you to strengthen, not repeal, the Clean Power Plan.”

Original post:  

4 ways the Republican tax plan could harm the planet.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Crown, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 4 ways the Republican tax plan could harm the planet.

Fossil fuel execs to Texas: Don’t target trans people.

by ConcepcionDunham Posted on August 1, 2017

Oh, and by the way, did you know there’s an EPA museum?

The one-room exhibit opened in Washington, D.C., just before Trump’s inauguration. The displays tell the history of the EPA while highlighting big Obama-era steps towards combating climate change, like the implementation of the Clean Power Plan and the signing of the Paris Agreement.

In light of Trump’s decisions to ditch both, the EPA as displayed isn’t looking quite Trump-y enough. A career EPA official told the Washington Post that, in addition to a coal display, plans are underway to add controversial EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch to the exhibit and expand on Trump areas of interest like the Superfund program. The Clean Power Plan and Paris Agreement displays are already scheduled for removal.

If you want a preview of the changes, current EPA officials have already put up a poster board that includes a photo of Pruitt shaking hands with miners and description that calls Trump’s approach to the EPA “back to the basics.” What basics are those, you might ask? We were wondering the same thing.

Visit link:

Fossil fuel execs to Texas: Don’t target trans people.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Eureka, FF, G & F, GE, Northeastern, ONA, Oster, Ringer, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fossil fuel execs to Texas: Don’t target trans people.

The coal executive jailed for a deadly mining disaster still says he’s innocent.

by BertieA66t Posted on May 12, 2017

Nicky Sheats has done his homework. After getting his degree from Harvard Law, Sheats went back to get a PhD in biogeochemistry, also at Harvard, and did a quick post-doc at Columbia. (Did we mention he went to Princeton for undergrad?) When his studies brought him to an environmental justice conference, Sheats saw a cause that united all his interests.

Over his career, Sheats has leaned on academic research to write policy initiatives for cleaner air in communities of color, which typically suffer from higher rates of air pollution. Recently, Sheats helped develop a municipal ordinance in Newark, New Jersey, that calls for stricter regulation of pollution caused by development projects. After six long years of campaigning, Newark passed the ordinance in July 2016.

Another win: When, in 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the Clean Power Plan, a set of rules that require electric power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Sheats saw huge gaps in policy and regulation that could potentially hurt low-income communities and communities of color. He gave lectures and wrote to policymakers, advocating for mandatory reductions of air pollution around these communities — not just for greenhouse gases, but also for “co-pollutants,” other toxins commonly released from power plants.

The EPA ended up adapting some of Sheats’ policies, albeit without including any concrete mechanisms to achieve that goal. “We think that if you don’t use climate change policy to reduce inequalities,” Sheats says, “you’ll miss a big opportunity to help environmental justice communities that may not come around again.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

More – 

The coal executive jailed for a deadly mining disaster still says he’s innocent.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The coal executive jailed for a deadly mining disaster still says he’s innocent.

U.S. likely to become a major energy exporter in a decade

by GilbertPfy Posted on January 6, 2017

The amount of energy Americans use and the pollution they emit from using coal, oil, and natural gas are not likely to change radically over the next 30 years, even as the U.S. becomes a major energy exporter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook, published Thursday.

The outlook, which does not factor in any policies from the incoming fossil fuel–friendly Trump administration, shows that the U.S. is unlikely to make significant gains in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to meet its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement, even though zero-carbon renewables are expected to grow faster than any other energy source over the next three decades.

Electricity generation is expected to remain the largest single use of energy in the U.S., but crude oil use for transportation is expected to be the largest source of energy-related carbon emissions. Carbon emissions from transportation surpassed those from electric power generation for the first time in U.S history in 2016.

The U.S. is likely to become a major exporter of energy because it is expected to produce about 20 percent more energy than it does today through 2040 while using only about 5 percent more energy, said EIA administrator Adam Sieminsky.

“We’re going to have fairly strong domestic production of energy and relatively flat demand,” he said. “You put those two together, it implies that the U.S. could become a net energy exporter.” And that could happen as soon as 2026.

That scenario, in addition to gains in energy efficiency across the country and declining coal consumption, will keep annual carbon emissions from energy use roughly level with today’s — about 5.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to EIA data.  Energy-related carbon emissions in the U.S. have been falling since they peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007.

The EIA offers a variety of different projections for how Americans will produce and use energy in the coming decades. The scenario in which the U.S. emits the most carbon dioxide through 2040 is the one in which the Obama administration’s signature climate change policy, the Clean Power Plan, is tossed out by the courts or the incoming Trump administration.

The Clean Power Plan, a major key to the success of the Paris Climate Agreement, was designed to limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants, encouraging utilities to generate more and more electricity using natural gas and renewables. But the plan’s fate is in doubt because 24 states have sued to kill it, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked it, and the incoming Trump administration has vowed to rescind it because it wants to revive the flagging coal industry.

The federal government is projecting that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from energy use will remain relatively steady in the coming decades.EIA

Regardless of the fate of the Clean Power Plan, energy-related carbon emissions are not expected to change much. If the plan is rescinded or overturned, the U.S. will emit about 5.4 billion metric tons annually through 2040 — slightly higher than today. If the plan remains in place, emissions are expected to drop to about 5 billion metric tons annually.

The biggest change the EIA expects to see over the next 30 years is one that’s already in progress today —  Americans are expected to use more and more natural gas and renewables than they do now. Natural gas production is expected to grow 1.2 percent through 2050, with wind and solar power production growing 3.5 percent.

“If the Clean Power Plan is not implemented, if natural gas prices remain relatively low, and the tax credits in the renewables area play out a little, we will see more natural gas in the future,” Sieminsky said.

The fracking boom in the U.S. over the past decade has flooded the country with natural gas, bringing prices down. Cheap natural gas, more so than climate regulations under the Clean Power Plan, has encouraged electric power companies to switch away from coal-fired power plants, which have always formed the backbone of the energy grid. The trend is expected to continue over the next 30 years.

For example, just this week, the operator of one of the West’s largest coal-fired power plants, the Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station northeast of the Grand Canyon, announced the plant and the coal mine that supplies it may close this year because of low natural gas prices, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper.

Despite growth in natural gas and renewables, the EIA expects coal production will continue a slow but gradual decline, falling only 0.7 percent through 2050.

Sieminsky said the decline in coal use in the U.S. will translate worldwide as well, and the fate of the Clean Power Plan isn’t much of a factor in the long-term outlook for coal because utilities have already begun committing to using natural gas to generate electricity.

“Capital costs of building coal plants are high,” he said. “A lot of countries are moving away from coal for air pollution reasons. It’s not a climate issue — it’s more of a health issue.”

China, for example, has begun shuttering coal-fired power plants to reduce its urban smog — the worst in the world.

Read this article: 

U.S. likely to become a major energy exporter in a decade

Posted in alo, Anchor, Down To Earth, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Landmark, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. likely to become a major energy exporter in a decade

Donald Trump’s Pick To Head The EPA Is "An Existential Threat To The Planet"

by ThelmaPeyser Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump’s transition team has announced that the next head of the EPA will be Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. This is very bad news!

As my colleague Jeremy Shulman noted earlier this year, Pruitt has some very dumb views about climate change.:

Views on climate change: “The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan. The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats’ authority over states’ energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity.” Pruitt press release, 7/1/15

Writing in National Review year, Pruitt blathered:

Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress.

Think Progress has many more reasons why Pruitt at the EPA is a disaster.

Read original article:

Donald Trump’s Pick To Head The EPA Is "An Existential Threat To The Planet"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump’s Pick To Head The EPA Is "An Existential Threat To The Planet"

American Coal Is Dying, and There’s Nothing Donald Trump Can Do About It

by Fausto99T761 Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Will Donald Trump rescue the coal industry? Nah. Brad Plumer explains:

If you want to see a good example of why Trump will struggle to bring back coal, just look at Michigan.

Last weekend, the CEO of Michigan’s largest electric utility reiterated that his company is still planning to retire all eight of its remaining coal plants by 2030 — whether or not Trump tries to repeal President Obama’s climate policies. “All of those retirements are going to happen regardless of what Trump may or may not do with the Clean Power Plan,” DTE Energy’s Gerry Anderson told MLive.com’s Emily Lawler.

….In Michigan, a new coal plant costs $133 per megawatt hour. A natural gas plant costs half that. Even wind contracts cost about $74.52 per megawatt hour. “I don’t know anybody in the country who would build another coal plant,” Anderson said.

If you want this in chart form—and who wouldn’t?—here is US coal production in the 21st century:

And that’s not the half of it. Coal production has dropped 31 percent from its peak, but coal employment has dropped 41 percent:

Coal executives don’t want to employ more miners. They want to automate as much as possible to squeeze the last few profits out of a dying industry. This has nothing to do with Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and there’s nothing Donald Trump can do about it. Coal is a buggy whip in an automobile era.

Hillary Clinton warned the coal community about this, just like Walter Mondale warned everyone that Reagan would increase their taxes. They were both right, but no one wanted to hear it. They preferred grand promises from charlatans instead.

Visit site – 

American Coal Is Dying, and There’s Nothing Donald Trump Can Do About It

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on American Coal Is Dying, and There’s Nothing Donald Trump Can Do About It

Day two of the Trump era, environmentalists set their sights on … holiday cups.

by DeanneJett Posted on November 11, 2016

On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to make the industry great again. “If I win we’re going to bring those miners back,” he said to an audience in West Virginia before donning a miner’s hat and doing a little working-in-the-coal-mine dance.

But for the coal industry — which donated about $223,000 to Trump’s campaign — reality is less rosy. Sure, shares in the bankrupt coal company Peabody soared nearly 50 percent the day after Trump’s victory. But that’s just Wall Street’s knee-jerk response. The fact is, the coal industry’s future is — at best — flat, according to analysts.

Over the last eight years, coal’s portion of the American electricity supply has dropped from half to a third, a result of falling natural gas prices, declining demand from China, and regulatory efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The best Trump can do, says Bloomberg News, is halt coal’s steep decline.

But even though Trump can’t save Big Coal, he can severely damage the planet by enabling the industry. He has promised to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, ignore the Paris climate agreement, and end investments in renewables. Just as coal can’t be revived, the planet can’t either.

Originally posted here – 

Day two of the Trump era, environmentalists set their sights on … holiday cups.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Day two of the Trump era, environmentalists set their sights on … holiday cups.

Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

by ReneHEHFqudao Posted on October 6, 2016

The U.S. and all of its major allies have now ratified the Paris climate agreement, pushing it over the threshold needed for it to go into effect in 30 days — just before the U.S. presidential election.

Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” Paris if he’s elected — and that may have unintentionally sped things along.

Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, told Grist by email, “the threat of a Trump presidency has pushed countries to go forward with ratification more quickly than anyone had anticipated at the time of Paris.” For historical comparison, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol took five years.

Once the deal is underway, it would be more difficult for Trump to extract the U.S. He’d need to give three years notice and allot an additional year for withdrawal.

Still, Trump could simply decide not to deliver on the U.S.’s pledges, by, say, refusing to implement the Clean Power Plan.

Even then, Stavins argues that progress would continue to be made in energy efficiency and at the state level. “Trump could slow down action on climate change, but not as dramatically as Trump may think he could.”

Continue reading:

Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hurricane Matthew has brought the weather deniers out of hiding.