CleanPowerPlan
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EPA scientific advisory board to review agency's recent rollbacks
This week, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) met to discuss some of the changes the agency has proposed under Administrator Scott Pruitt. And ultimately, the 44-person board voted to review a number of the EPA's proposals and write a letter to Pruitt. "The leadership of the board was chosen by Pruitt himself, so their decision today is a sharp rebuke of his leadership and this dangerous proposal," Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg.
Google wants the Clean Power Plan to stick around too
If we don't want the seas to boil and the skies to burn, we need to stop polluting the world with climate altering gases. Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to gut the Clean Power Plan, legislation aimed at curbing America's carbon emissions by almost a third by 2030. And it's something that, like Apple, Google has decided to fight, making a public statement in support of the Clean Power Plan just before the deadline closed.
Apple voices support for Clean Power Plan ahead of pending repeal
In October, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he would sign a proposed rule that would withdraw the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP). The environmental regulations have had a contentious history since initially being proposed in 2014 and now they face the strongest threat to their implementation yet. In October, Pruitt said during a speech, "Here's the president's message: The war on coal is over." As is typical with these sorts of proposed rule changes, the plan to repeal the CPP was subject to public comment, deadlines for which have been extended multiple times. Now, ahead of the April 26th deadline, Apple has filed its comment, opposing the repeal of the CPP.
Coal power plant closures ramp up in spite of White House plans
The Trump administration may hope that it can reverse coal power's decline by ending the Clean Power Plan and other eco-friendly efforts, but the industry's moves suggest otherwise. Luminant has announced plans to close three major coal plants in Texas (in Freestone, Milam and Titus counties) between January and February of 2018. The shutdowns will take a combined 4,200MW of power off the grid -- enough to run over 4 million homes, as Reuters notes. The news boosts the expected capacity of 2018 power plant closures to over 13,600MW, or a whopping 79 percent more than the known closures for this year. It's not a record high (nearly 18,000MW went offline in 2015), but it's clear that the trend is toward more closures, not fewer.
EPA plans to repeal Obama-era Clean Power Plan
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, Scott Pruitt, announced today he would sign a proposed rule that would withdraw the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP). "Here's the president's message: The war on coal is over," Pruitt said today during a speech given in Hazard, Kentucky.
Apple, Google and Microsoft back EPA's emissions strategy
The White House and Environmental Protection Agency may have their plans for carbon dioxide emissions reduction hanging by a thread in court, but they're getting some big allies in their corner. Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft have submitted a joint legal brief supporting the EPA's Clean Power Plan following a challenge by 29 states. They argue that the emissions regulation is not only realistic, but makes good business sense. Prices for solar and wind power are coming down, and their energy is a hedge against both volatile fuel prices and outages -- you can store unused power to ride out a storm, for instance.
Supreme Court decision may derail Obama's emissions pledge
At the Paris climate talks, President Obama pledged that America, historically the world's biggest polluter, would reduce its carbon emissions 32 percent by 2030. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that it will not enforce his Clean Power Plan, now under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The court voted along party lines, with the five conservative judges ruling that states don't have to start making emissions cuts until lower courts rule on pending challenges.
