The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. A rule meant to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. It's widely seen as a replacement rule to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
The 2015 Clean Power Plan had sought to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plant levels back to 2005 levels. By 2030, the plan hoped to reduce carbon dioxide by 32 percent. In 2016, the Supreme Court placed a stay before the rule could take effect.
In August of last year, the EPA proposed the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule to replace the Clean Power Plan. But Matt Preston, Wood Mackenzie research director for North American Coal Markets, said the two plans should not be compared. He said ACE has little to no teeth in enforcing emissions reductions. For one, it focuses on improving power plant efficiency over mandatory emission limits. Preston said that could actually increase emissions.
"If you really improve the efficiency of coal power plants and nothing else changes then actually the power plants would run more," he said.
The rule also puts the reins mostly into state hands, by setting out guidelines for states to make their own plans to limit pollution from coal-fired power plants.
"ACE identifies heat rate improvements as the best system of emission reduction (BSER) for CO2 from coal-fired power plants, and these improvements can be made at individual facilities. States will have three years to submit plans, which is in line with other planning timelines under the Clean Air Act," reads the E.P.A. press release. It adds states can take a source's remaining useful life into account when setting standards of performance.
Connie Wilbert, president of the Sierra Club's Wyoming chapter, said the EPA should be reducing emissions to the greatest extent possible. She said that's not happening without mandatory emissions reductions.
"It will increase people's electricity costs and it will actually make the climate crisis worse. As far as we can see the only beneficiaries are going to be a small number of coal industry executives," Wilbert said.
But many in Wyoming are happy with the plan. Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said it's more realistic than the Clean Power Plan would have been.
"The focus is on regulating those individual sources in a state rather than trying to remake the entire power grid," Deti said. "You're not set with these arbitrary state targets. You're allowed more flexibility in the state."
U.S. Senator John Barrasso said this follows the law while lowering emissions, adding Wyoming would not do well with a one-size-fits-all policy like the Clean Power Plan.
"I think Wyoming does a better job than just about anyplace else in the world to doing that and I have a lot of respect for the way Wyoming does it and protects our environment. And I think we don't need Washington telling us how to do things that I think we do pretty well," he said.
Andrew Wheeler, the EPA Administrator, said this rule helps deliver on one of the President's core priorities of providing access to reliable energy.
