President Obama Issues New Climate Change Regulations

The Obama administration has issued a climate change rule for power plants that requires electricity generators cut their carbon dioxide output 32 percent by 2030, from a 2005 starting point.

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking states to formulate plans to reach specific carbon reduction goals assigned to them.  If the states do not submit plans — as multiple conservative states have threatened — the EPA will write and impose its own strategies upon them.

The administration estimates that the climate benefits, in addition to benefits from reducing other pollutants from power plants, would result in a net $46 billion benefit to the nation by 2030, along with thousands of avoided premature deaths and asthma attacks.

Compared with the carbon limits the EPA proposed last year, the final rule is 9 percent more stringent than the 30 percent cut originally envisioned.

It delays the first round of carbon goals to 2022 from 2020, a move the White House said would result in far more renewable energy such as wind and solar and less natural gas replacing coal, which is currently the dominant fuel for electricity.

And despite the added stringency, the rule is predicted to avoid little more than 0.01 degrees Celsius in global warming, since the United States’s emissions are only a small part of the world’s.

The new plan also includes incentives for states to comply early, with matching grants for reductions before the deadlines.  (The Hill, 8/2/2015)