What's at Risk, and Talking Points

Despite the serious impacts of climate change now and in the future, the Trump administration in October 2018 proposed to repeal the federal rule issued to control our country's biggest source of climate pollution -- fossil-fuel-fired power plants.

When EPA issued the final Clean Power Plan (CPP) in August 2015, it sent a powerful signal that the U.S. was taking strong action to combat climate change.  Its adoption was also critical to the U.S. playing a leadership role in fruitful international deliberations to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases.

Now the Trump Administration has proposed to turn its back on this achievement and repeal the CPP based on an untested claim that EPA lacks authority for a rule like the CPP.  Rather than allowing the court to decide the CPP’s legality, the Trump EPA is interpreting the law to disallow the most effective approaches to reducing power plant emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The proposed repeal of the CPP is the next step in implementation of President Trump's March 28 Executive Order titled "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth." The order calls for review and revision or repeal of many climate rules and policies.  The Administration is considering whether and how to replace the CPP through a separate advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM).

The CPP was developed after years of extensive public engagement that explored how best to establish requirements under the Clean Air Act to limit climate-changing carbon dioxide (CO₂) pollution from the power sector.  The rule establishes emission targets and provides each state with flexibility to design its own plan for cutting CO₂ pollution from fossil-fuel-fired power plants.  By 2030, the CPP would help achieve a 32 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions from the power sector relative to the 2005 level.  CO₂ reduction strategies also would cut emissions of other air pollutants that are associated with increases in heart attacks, hospital admissions for asthma attacks, and deaths.

EPA’s 2015 analysis shows that the health, environmental and other economic benefits of the CPP are large, dwarfing the costs to comply.  The Trump administration has produced a new economic analysis that omits some benefits and changes key assumptions, producing a different assessment to support the repeal.

This web page provides information on the proposed repeal action.  For information and on the notice about CPP replacement, see Advance Notice: Possible Replacement of the Clean Power Plan.  

The Clean Power Plan

In August 2015, EPA issued the final CPP to reduce climate changing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired electric power plants. CO2 is the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases that are the primary cause of climate change, threatening the lives, health, and well-being of Americans and people worldwide.

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) build up in the atmosphere and have wide-ranging impacts around the globe. Current and anticipated impacts include:

heat waves and record high temperatures along with an increased risk of heat-related illnesses and death especially among the poor and elderly;

greater risk of droughts, fire, more damaging storms, and floods that can cause deaths and injuries as well as damage to property and infrastructure;

increased spread of diseases, increases in health problems from ozone pollution in U.S. cities, and increases in allergens;

acidification of the oceans, extinction of species, damage to crops and fisheries, and potential increases in world hunger and other destabilizing changes that would reduce U.S. national security; and

possible rapid changes that could cause abrupt and serious impacts for people and ecosystems. (For more information and scientific report sources, click here.) 

Climate change disproportionately threatens the health and welfare of vulnerable populations in the U.S. and around the world including children, the elderly and the poor including the health and welfare of indigenous people.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that between 1980 and October 6, 2017, U.S. billion-dollar extreme weather disasters had cost $1.3 trillion in inflation-adjusted damage and resulted in 9,905 deaths, not counting Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.¹  Climate change already has exacerbated extreme weather and can be expected to have even greater effects in the future.²

Coal and gas-fired power plants together emit more CO2 than any other category of emissions sources in the U.S.  By 2030, the CPP would reduce power plant CO2 emissions by 32% from the 2005 level.

The CPP sets emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants and corresponding emissions goals for each state.  The goals reflect the unique power system in each state.  Under the CPP, each state is to develop and implement its own plan to reach its goal.  There is an array of policies that states can use to meet their goals.  Each state can choose policies that best fit their own power generating sector.  EPA has provided model plans that a state could adopt and implement if it did not want to write its own plan.  Or, if a state preferred, the state could choose to defer to a federal plan that EPA would implement.  (For a brief primer on CPP design, see "A Short Primer on the Clean Power Plan" in the "For More Information" section below.)

EPA's 2015 analysis shows that the benefits of the CPP are large, dwarfing the costs.  Twenty billion dollars in climate-related benefits alone would occur in 2030.  Furthermore, the measures taken under the CPP to reduce CO2 emissions would cut emissions of other air pollutants as well as pollutants associated with increases in heart attacks, asthma attacks and deaths, producing health benefits of $14 to $34 billion.  In total, the net benefits of the CPP (the value of total health, environmental and other economic benefits, minus the cost to comply) were estimated to range from between $26 billion to $45 billion in 2030.

The economic incentives created by the CPP would spur investment in new clean technology such as wind and solar generated electricity.  Natural gas generation, which emits half as much CO2 as coal generation, also would increase. Over time coal-fired generation would continue the decrease already in progress due to market forces, but coal would continue to play a major part in America's energy mix even in 2030. Investments in cleaner technologies would create jobs in those sectors. EPA's analysis showed that by 2030, more efficient use of electricity would result in the average family's electric bill being $7 lower with the CPP than it would have been otherwise.

The Trump Administration Rollback Proposal

The CPP repeal proposal is a key action stemming from the President's March 28 executive order, which calls review and potential suspension or repeal of CPP and multiple other Obama administration climate rules and policies. The President and top administration officials have objected to economic impacts of the CPP and have repeatedly questioned the extent to which human-caused climate change is real or serious.  However, the notice proposing to repeal the CPP focuses on the contention that EPA lacked the legal authority to issue the rule.

The proposed CPP repeal notice also says that EPA is reconsidering whether it is appropriate to propose a rule to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. If it decides to do so, EPA will issue an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking in the near future.

The CPP is the subject of lawsuits pending in the federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed the CPP on hold until those legal challenges are resolved.  This proposal would repeal the CPP without waiting for the courts to decide the CPP's legality.

The Trump administration claims that only changes made at the fossil fuel plants themselves are consistent with the language of the Clean Air Act. Therefore, the Administration says that only changes made at the plants should be used to set standards under the Clean Air Act even though, those changes are relatively expensive for the minimal amount of CO2 emissions they reduce.

EPA took a different view of the law in issuing the original CPP rule.

The agency recognized that the electric power generating system is interconnected.  So, EPA reasoned that the best system of emission reduction under the relevant part of the Clean Air Act would include both making individual plants more efficient, and substituting increased generation from lower-emitting or zero-emitting plants -- such as natural-gas-fired plants and solar and wind generation -- for some higher-emitting fossil-fuel-fired generation. These emission reduction methods are reflected in the CPP's power plant CO2 emission rates and corresponding state emission goals.

One problem for the repeal effort is that EPA's 2015 CPP economic analysis shows large benefits that far exceed the costs. So, the Trump administration has created a questionable analytic redo of the CPP economic analysis, making several changes that increase the estimated costs of CPP and reduce the estimated benefits in an apparent effort to show that repealing the CPP would not harm our country's welfare. The omission of some benefits and the use of inappropriate assumptions results in a series of cost-benefit comparisons that, in most cases, suggest that the costs saved from repeal are almost as great or slightly greater than the benefit of keeping the CPP in place.  The new analysis also treats energy efficiency savings as a benefit rather than a cost, which produces higher cost figures (without affecting the cost-benefit balance)^.3  (For more information, see suggested talking points below on CPP benefits and costs.)

Suggested Talking Points

Talking Points -- Why We Must Combat Climate Change

The continued emissions of carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases threaten the lives, health and well-being of Americans and people worldwide. These long-lived gases are building up in the atmosphere and causing far-reaching changes to our planet, according to the National Research Council (the operational arm of the National Academies), and other scientific authorities:

Heat waves and record high temperatures have increased across most regions of the world resulting in an increased risk of heat-related illnesses and deaths, especially among the poor and elderly.

Patterns of precipitation now are changing regionally, and over time are expected to make dry areas dryer and wet areas wetter. These increasing trends will bring more droughts, increase fire risks, and intensify severe storms, extreme weather and flooding -- events that can cause deaths, and injuries, as well as billions of dollars of damage to property and the nation's infrastructure (e.g., electric power grid, roads and transportation systems, water distribution systems, buildings, etc.)

Recent extreme weather gives us a preview of the type of devastation that scientists say will occur more and more frequently.  The hurricane damage in 2017 alone is estimated to be more than $300 billion dollars, far in excess of the annual cost of the Clean Power Plan.⁴

A myriad of other public health concerns are raised in the scientific literature include anticipated increases in ground-level ozone pollution, the potential for enhanced spread of some waterborne and pest-related diseases, and evidence for increased production or dispersion of airborne allergens.

Numerous species in the ocean and on land over time will be threatened with extinction. We are currently seeing the worst die-off of species since the loss of the dinosaurs and in fact scientists say that we may be experiencing the beginning of the sixth mass extinction. Unlike the preceding five mass extinctions, this one is human caused.⁵

Threats to the food chain are becoming evident and will continue to be more pronounced. Warmer waters can lead to a decline in oxygen causing dead zones threatening important U.S. fisheries. Increased CO2 in the oceans is causing them to become increasingly acidic, threatening many species including important food commodities. On land the changing climate over time is expected to damage staple crops, and global food security may be threatened.

The Department of Defense states, "Global climate change will aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries."⁶

Those most vulnerable to climate related health effects -- such as children, the elderly, the poor, and future generations -- face disproportionate risks.⁷ Studies also find that climate change poses particular threats to the health, well-being, and ways of life of indigenous peoples in the United States.⁸

Several assessments state that we may be approaching critical, poorly understood thresholds that may lead to rapid and potentially permanent changes not predicted by climate models that could cause abrupt and serious impacts for society and ecosystems.

Multiple lines of evidence show that most of the recent warming is due to human activities, according to EPA and major climate assessment reports:

First, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased to levels not seen in hundreds of thousands of years, and these gases are known to trap heat.

Second, multiple sets of temperature records show that the earth is in fact growing hotter, and estimates of past climate changes suggest that changes in global surface temperature over the last several decades are unusual.

Third, peer-reviewed climate models that simulate response of the climate system to natural and human influences are only able to replicate the observed warming when human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are included.

[Source:  U.S. EPA, Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act; Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 74, No. 239, December 15, 2009, pp. 66523 and subsequent.  https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-08/documents/federal_register-epa-hq-oar-2009-0171-dec.15-09.pdf)

Talking Points -- The Legal Rationale for the Repeal

Both the CPP repeal and the related ANPRM rely on an untested legal assertion -- that the relevant portion of the Clean Air Act limits EPA to considering emission reduction measures that can be applied to or at an individual pollution source.  That legal issue has already been fully briefed and argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  The Trump Administration should stop asking for delay and ask for a court decision.

The Administration’s approach substitutes Administrator Pruitt’s legal judgment – which could be reversed by the next Administrator – for the authoritative judgment of the federal courts.

The Administration’s legal position disallows the most effective approaches for reducing power plant emissions, and makes it more expensive for the power sector to achieve any given level of emissions reduction.  It reflects an archaic view of power generation before there was a grid that connects individual power plants.

Talking Points -- Why the Clean Power Plan (CPP) is a Sound Way to Cut Climate Pollution

Fossil fuel-fired power plants are the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., emitting 31% of U.S. emissions.  Any credible effort to cut climate-changing emissions must substantially cut power plant emissions.

The CPP is an appropriate way to cut climate pollution under the Clean Air Act because it recognizes that electricity system is interconnected and reflects the way the power industry really works.  It is based on regulatory tools used to regulate power plant pollution for decades (e.g., trading mechanisms that allow for the greatest reduction at the lowest cost).  The repeal proposal single-plant approach reflects an archaic view of power generation before there was a grid.

The CPP is fair, flexible and designed to strengthen the advancement of America's power grid toward cleaner fuels and newer technologies while keeping the supply of electric power affordable and reliable.

The CPP requires substantial reductions in CO2 emissions from power plants while allowing each state to design a program to achieve that objective is a manner consistent with its own policy preferences and the characteristics of the electric power industry operating in that state.

The CPP gives states flexibility to design pollution reduction plans that enable the power sector to maintain reliable and affordable electricity while cutting emissions.

Talking Points -- CPP Economic Benefits and Costs

Repeal would allow more pollution that harms the health and welfare of the American people.  EPA's 2015 analysis estimates that the CPP's benefits ($31 to $54 billion under various assumptions) would far exceed the costs ($5.1 to 8.4 billion) upon full implementation in 2030.

Reducing climate pollution will also reduce pollutants that form particle pollution (soot) and ozone smog.  EPA's 2015 analysis shows that implementation of the CPP in 2030 would avoid 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks in children, up to 1,700 heart attacks, 1,700 hospital admissions, and 300,000 missed workdays and missed school days. From the soot and smog reductions alone, for every dollar invested through the Clean Power Plan, American families would see up to $4 in health benefits.  Repeal means that these health benefits would be lost. The Trump administration's economic analysis for the repeal proposal appears designed to produce new numbers that provide arguments for repeal by emphasizing cost-benefit comparisons that only count a portion of the benefits or make assumptions not consistent with the best scientific and economic information. Specifically:

The Trump administration analysis of repeal only counts the climate-related benefits that the Clean Power Plan would produce within the U.S., and ignores the large portion of benefits that would occur beyond U.S. borders. This alone dramatically reduces the calculated benefits.  In reality, each country's greenhouse gas pollution causes harm worldwide.

The domestic-only approach is wrong for several reasons.  First, it is wrong, factually and morally, to ignore the damage our pollution causes to people in other countries; it's not consistent with our values.  Second, it is economically misguided.  Counting only domestic benefits would likely lead to emission reduction policies that cure only a small part of the global market failure that provides economic incentives for huge amounts of greenhouse gas pollution -- and as a result, dangerous climate change would proceed.  Third, switching to a domestic-benefits-only approach is counterproductive to Americans' vital interest in effective action by all countries to cut climate-changing emissions.  To encourage other countries to account for the damage their pollution causes to our country, we must account for the damage our pollution does abroad.  Finally, ignoring international economic impacts and other international impacts is wrong because these impacts affect the United States -- for example, the effects of climate change are potentially destabilizing, making the world more dangerous and harming U.S. U.S. national security.

The repeal analysis discounts the lives, health and welfare of future generations more severely than other recent federal analyses of environmental rules. This too is morally troubling.  It encourages policy makers to make decisions that largely ignore the implications for future generations, rather than decisions that protect our children and grandchildren.

The repeal analysis contains some cost-benefit comparisons that ignore or only partially count the benefits of other air pollution reductions that occur due to CO₂ reduction strategies. Particle pollution is associated with increases in early deaths, heart attacks, hospital admissions for asthma attacks, acute bronchitis, and other serious health effects.⁹  For example, some cost-benefit comparisons count only the benefits of CO₂.  This ideological approach deviates from standard methodology for EPA analyses and fails to reflect the fact that multiple types of pollutant reductions will result from CO₂ reduction strategies.

Other cost-benefit comparisons inappropriately assume that there is some threshold concentration below which particle pollution is not harmful. That assumption is contrary to the best science according to a 2009 EPA assessment that was peer-reviewed and approved by independent, congressionally mandated expert panels.¹⁰

The scenarios with the most complete accounting of benefits, including scenarios in the main and alternative analyses, indicate that repeal of the CPP would substantially harm the country's welfare.  The alternative analyses used projections from the Energy Information Administration's 2017 Annual Energy Outlook¹¹ -- with the CPP and without the CPP -- to calculate forgone benefits and costs.  Even though this analysis ignores the large climate benefits that would occur outside the U.S., forgone health and domestic climate benefits in 2030 would be $16.8 billion to $44.9 billion, much larger than the forgone costs of $14.4 billion.  Those benefits reflect the avoidance of 1,900 to 4,500 premature deaths through CPP implementation (with no threshold for fine particle health effects).

The CPP encourages investment in clean renewable technologies.  Investments in clean energy and energy efficiency already are creating jobs and increasing the energy efficiency of homes, buildings and equipment.¹²  Under the CPP, the average homeowner's monthly electricity bill would go down over time as the electricity system becomes cleaner and more efficient.

What You Can Do

It would be great if well-reasoned, fact-based comments were enough to win the day, but in today's deregulatory environment, raising the political stakes of regulatory rollbacks is crucial to stopping or slowing them down.  Submitting comments is a good first step. For rules that are particularly important to you, please consider taking one or more of the following steps, too. These methods can help to mobilize public opinion and spur elected leaders to fight the destructive changes that the Trump Administration is promoting at EPA.

Write to your members of Congress and other elected officials.  Let them know your concerns and ask them to weigh in on this rollback, and speak out publicly in favor of the CPP.  These links make it easy to write your members of Congress (your representative in the House of Representatives and your two senators).  If you're willing to register with Countable, this link --  https://www.countable.us/ -- allows you to identify your members of Congress and send a message to all three at once.  Or, you can write them separately -- you can use https://whoismyrepresentative.com/ or https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials/ to find your members' email contact forms or snail mail addresses.

You can find contact information for your member of Congress and other elected officials at https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.  If you don’t know who your members of Congress are, you can find them by entering your address at https://www.govtrack.us/.

Write letters to the editor and even op-eds in your local papers.  Letters to the editor should be fairly brief.

Organize or participate in letter-writing campaigns.campaigns to make phone calls or write letters to members of Congress, and make phone calls to radio stations during call-in days, or take other actions to spread the word.

Inform your local officials about these issues, and ask them to make a public statement or submit comments on a proposed rollback if your jurisdiction has a stake in these issues.  Bring up these issues at town hall meetings.

Spread the word via social media.  Tag your elected officials so they know how you feel.

Join or organize demonstrations.

Talk to your friends, colleagues and neighbors and encourage them to comment and otherwise join in this effort.

Vote.

Finally, and perhaps most important, one of the most effective things that you can do is to organize or join efforts to encourage action on climate change by your state or city.  Many states and cities are taking a leadership position on climate change.  Many are marshaling efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases including emissions from power plants.  Let officials in your area know that you support these efforts.  Write to your elected leaders, get involved with local activists who are encouraging local or state action.  Voice your concern and encouragement in the media, social media, at local meetings, and at every opportunity.  In the absence of federal leadership, it is vitally important that states and local governments fill the void.

For More Information

A Short Primer on the Clean Power Plan

The CPP rule provides states with flexibility to choose how to reduce power plant emissions in the following manner.  First, the CPP rule establishes carbon dioxide (CO2) emission performance rates representing the best system of emission reduction (BSER) for two subcategories of existing fossil fuel-fired EGUs – fossil-fuel-fired electric utility steam generating units (coal-fired and other boilers) and stationary combustion turbines (e.g., natural gas-fired combined cycle).  Second, the CPP rule also set state-specific CO2 goals reflecting the CO2 emission performance rates and the mix of generating units in that state.  A state could elect either a mass-based goal (tons of emissions per year) or a rate-based goal (emissions per net megawatt-hour of electricity generated).  Third, the CPP rule set guidelines for the development, submittal and implementation of state plans.  The state plans must establish measures to achieve the CO2 emission performance rates, which may be accomplished by meeting the state goals.

A state can choose an emission standards plan that achieved the required reductions entirely through federally enforceable emission standards for fossil-fuel-fired power plants, such as an emissions trading program for those plants only.  Alternatively, a state can choose a state measures plan containing other sorts of measures for reducing power plant emissions.  Those other measures could include, for example, state-enforceable programs for increasing renewable energy generation or the energy efficiency of electricity end use by industrial, commercial or residential consumers.  Emissions trading programs to reduce CO₂ that include both power plants and other emissions sources would be another option for a state measures plan.  All state measures plans must contain federally enforceable emissions standards for the covered power plants as a backstop measure -- in case the state measures fail to achieve the required reductions, and to satisfy legal requirements.

Additional Information Sources

EPA Regulatory Impact Analysis for the Final Clean Power Plan, October, 2015, https://www3.epa.gov/ttnecas1/docs/ria/utilities_ria_final-clean-power-plan-existing-units_2015-08.pdf

EPA, Regulatory Impact Analysis for the Review of the Clean Power Plan: Proposal, October 2017, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-10/documents/ria_proposed-cpp-repeal_2017-10_0.pdf

National Research Council (2010), "Advancing the Science of Climate Change," National Academy Press, Washington, DC available at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782/advancing-the-science-of-climate-change

U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), 5th Order Draft, June 28, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html?_r=0

Key Findings from Authoritative Scientific Reports on Climate Change, Attachment to letter signed by 777 former EPA employees, April 14, 2017, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxEEWBL5FvSkOTRucTlFRXltQ2M/view The signed letter is available at http://saveepaalums.info/the-earth-warms-while-trump-ignores-science-a-letter-from-777-epa-alums/

Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, "New EPA Document Reveals Sharply Lower Estimate of the Cost Of Climate Change", October 11, 2017, 

Dino Grandoni, The Washington Post, "The Energy 202: The Other Scientific Consensus that EPA is Bucking," October 11, 2017,

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ENDNOTES

1. NOAA, "Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Summary Stats," https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/summary-stats

2. U.S. Global Change Research Program, "Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, May 2014."  http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report

3. US EPA, News Release, October 10, 2017. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-takes-another-step-advance-president-trumps-america-first-strategy-proposes-repeal

4. NOAA, National Centers for Environmental Information, US Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2018). https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/

5. Center for Biological Diversity, "The Extinction Crisis," http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

6.U.S. Department of Defense, National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate, July 23, 2015. This report has been archived at http//archive.defense.gov/pubs/150724-congressional-report-on-national-implications-of-climate-change.pdf?source=govdelivery

7. Fischer, Douglas, "Climate Change Hits Poor Hardest in U.S.," Scientific American, May 29, 2009;  Union of Concerned Scientists, "Climate Change Hits Poor Hardest and Worst," Catalyst, Fall 2015, http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/fa15-where-climate-change-hits-first-and-worst#.WeTD00yFTVo

8. Tsosie, Rebecca, "Indigenous People and Environmental Justice: The Impact of Climate Change," 78 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1625 (2007)

9. U.S. EPA, web page titled "Health and Environmental Effects of Particulate Matter," https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm.  

10. "Particulate matter air pollution and cardiovascular disease: an update to the scientific statement from the American Heart Association," Brook RD, Rajagopalan S, Pope CA, III, Brook JR, Bhatnagar A, Diez-Roux A, et al.Circulation. 2010;121:23312378.[PubMed]

11. . Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2017, https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/0383(2017).pdf

12. According the Department of Energy there were over 360,000 people employed in wind and solar electricity generation in 2016.   Employment in solar grew by 25% and wind by 32% in 2016.  Energy efficiency is estimated to provide almost 2.2 million jobs.  US DOE, "US Energy and Employment Report," January 2017.