Trump power plan keeps coal stoked
Environmentalists warn of ruinous effects
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is keeping a signature campaign promise to boost the coal industry, but environmentalists say the energy plan his administration rolled out Wednesday would lead to premature deaths, increase the risk of lung disease and hasten climate change.
The Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, an amendment to the Clean Air Act, is likely to extend the lives of potentially scores of aging coal-fired power plants across the country whose carbon emissions are blamed for contributing to global warming.
It replaces the Clean Power Plan, President Barack Obama’s aggressive strategy to confront climate change that never took effect after the Su
preme Court prevented its implementation in 2016.
Obama’s approach sought to shutter dozens of coal-fired power plants by forcing utilities to cut down on emissions of carbon, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that contribute to global warming.
Many of those plants are likely to operate longer under the Trump administration rule because it gives states and utilities flexibility to design a plan that proponents say will keep energy costs for coal plants and consumers low while gradually reducing carbon emissions.
Under ACE, states have three years to submit a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency for review. The agency estimates that 600 coal-fired electric generation units at 300 facilities nationwide will be covered by the rule though officials could not say how many of them would run longer as a result.
The new rule, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said, “gives states the regulatory certainty they need to continue to reduce emissions and provide affordable and reliable energy to all Americans.”
Opponents argue it does little to confront the escalating dangers posed by climate change and will allow power plants to keep spewing air pollutants, such as soot, that lead to asthma and other lung-related diseases.
“As rising temperatures, surging seas and record-breaking natural disasters ravage communities everywhere, the Trump Administration continues to ignore science and put the interests of polluters ahead of the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., said in a statement.
Environmental groups and some states vowed to sue to stop the plan’s implementation, just as opponents of Obama’s Clean Power Plan did successfully four years ago.
“Like so many other Trump regulatory rollbacks, these new (ACE) rules will hit the wall in the courts,” David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote in a blog.
Trump has made reviving the coal industry a signature plank of his “Make America Great Again” agenda.
The issue could be a factor in the 2020 election in swing states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, where coal is still mined.
Labor Department statistics show that the industry workforce has risen slightly under his administration after hitting a low in 2016, Obama’s last year in office.
Obama’s Clean Power Plan was finalized in 2015, mainly targeting coalfired plants that account for nearly 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. It remains on hold under a Supreme Court stay, pending the outcome of a legal challenge from states.
Mandy Gunasekara, who worked on the ACE proposal in the EPA until leaving the agency in February, said ACE has a better chance of improving air quality than the Clean Power Plan because it’s more likely to survive a court challenge.
“For all the fanfare around the CPP, it achieved a total number of zero emission reductions due to Supreme Court intervention,” said Gunasekara, who runs a nonprofit group called Energy45 to promote Trump’s energy policies. “ACE establishes a cooperative framework whereby the federal government works alongside state government to advance environmental goals. For any honest environmentalist, this (is) something to be celebrated.”
Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental organization, said the Trump rule is misguided not only because it promotes bad policy but because the industry doesn’t even want it. “It contemplates investing more money in old, dirty coal plants,” he said. “The one thing they chose to base this rule on is the one thing that no one is doing. Nobody is putting money into old coal plants right now.”
“The one thing they chose to base this rule on is the one thing that no one is doing. Nobody is putting money into old coal plants right now.” Conrad Schneider Clean Air Task Force