Obama Era Clean Power Plan to Be Binned
View on Chemistry World website"Karen Palmer, an economist with Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, warns that these steps to repeal the CPP create ‘a lot of regulatory uncertainty’ in the industry. ‘The expectation is that there are ultimately going to need to be regulations of these emissions, since the EPA is required to do so by law, and so this introduces uncertainty about what that is going to look like,’ she says, noting that the supreme court has ruled that the EPA is obliged to regulate carbon emissions. ‘Power plants are long-lived assets, so this sector would like to have some sense of future regulatory requirements,’ Palmer asserts.
Further, she suggests that the White House used fuzzy math to arrive at a positive net benefit from repealing the existing CPP. Specifically, the Trump administration estimates that the rule’s reversal could help avoid up to $33 billion (£25 billion) in compliance costs in 2030. She says the EPA appears to have discounted the air pollution benefits associated with the CPP. ‘The benefits of reduced sulfur dioxide and NOX emissions are calculated in a way that is counter to the literature – it is not a full accounting of the benefits,’ Palmer tells Chemistry World. ‘It implies that their reduction to below certain thresholds of concentrations of fine particulates don’t provide any health benefits, and that assumption is counter to the public health literature.’"
