The US is set to impose new carbon pollution standards upon its coal- and gas-fired power plants, in a move that the Biden administration has hailed as a major step in confronting the climate crisis.
Under new rules put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), new and existing power plants will have to meet a range of new standards to cut their emissions of planet-heating gases. This, the EPA predicts, will spur facilities to switch to cleaner energy such as wind and solar, install rarely used carbon capture technology or shut down entirely.
In all, the EPA forecasts that the standards would prevent up to 617m tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted from coal and gas plants over the next two decades, which is equivalent to the yearly emissions of around half of all the cars in the US, or nearly double what the entire UK emits in a year.
The new rule – if it survives a gamut of expected legal challenges – will help “safeguard the planet for future generations”, according to Michael Regan, the EPA administrator.
“Not only will the proposal improve air quality nationwide, it will bring substantial health improvements to communities across this country, especially communities that have unjustly borne the burden of pollution,” Regan said. “The public and environmental benefits of this rule will be tremendous.”
The new rule has been welcomed by environmental groups as a potentially pivotal moment that should, in combination with support for clean energy in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, drive down emissions in the power sector, which contributes about a quarter of the US’s overall greenhouse gas pollution.
Researchers have warned that without further regulation of major pollution sources, the US – the world’s largest historical emitter of planet-heating gases – will miss its climate targets and risk unleashing ever worsening heatwaves, droughts, flooding and societal upheaval at home and overseas.
“The EPA’s proposed rule sends an unequivocal signal to American power plant operators: the era of unlimited carbon pollution is over,” said Dan Lashof, US director of the World Resources Institute, who added that the regulation would result in more than an 80% reduction in carbon pollution from power plants by 2040 compared to 2005 levels.
“This is a day for the history books, as the United States locks into the path toward a prosperous, clean and equitable future.,” Lashof said.
The climate rule caps off a month of frenzied activity by the EPA, which has issued a flurry of new regulations aimed at curbing air toxins from industrial facilities and restricting planet-heating gases from new cars and trucks.
In combination, these moves “have the potential to substantially advance clean power generation in the US”, according to Brian Murray, an environmental policy expert at Duke University. This is despite a series of controversial recent decisions by the Biden administration that risk undermining its own climate agenda, such as the approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska and the buildout of a growing export industry for liquified natural gas.
Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen, an environmental campaign group, said younger voters in particular want the Biden administration “to make polluters clean up their act; in fact they want him to go further, faster. Vehicles and power plants are the two most polluting sectors in the US and the sticks that the EPA can wield here are essential.”
The agency’s push to tackle the climate crisis still faces significant hurdles.
The rightwing-dominated supreme court, which limited the scope of the EPA’s climate actions in a ruling last summer, may well intervene again after the almost inevitable lawsuits that coal-rich Republican states will probably launch. The supreme court previously stymied a previous, albeit more sweeping, attempt to regulate power plants by Barack Obama’s administration.
EPA officials have said, however, they are confident the rule sits within the court’s view of the agency’s authority. “We feel really good that we are within those bounds,” Regan said.
Meanwhile, a future Republican president, perhaps even Donald Trump, could undo the pollution regulations. The new climate rule already has a committed congressional foe in the form of Senator Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat who personally has coal interests in his native West Virginia.
“This administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal- and gas-fueled power plants out of existence,” said Manchin, who vowed, as chairman of the Senate’s energy and natural resources committee, to block all EPA nominees in protest over the rule.
This rhetoric was echoed by the National Mining Association, which claimed that the EPA’s “disregard for the repercussions of premature coal plant retirements” posed serious risks.
Several analyses have shown, however, that coal is being displaced in the US largely by economic forces, such as cheaper gas, rather than environmental regulation. The toll of fossil fuels remains immense, too – as well as spurring the climate crisis, the burning of fossil fuels is estimated to kill around 9 million people worldwide each year through air pollution.
The EPA predicts the new climate rule will have $85bn in climate and public health benefits by 2042, preventing about 1,300 premature deaths and 300,000 severe asthma attacks in 2030 alone by reducing harmful air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
The new climate rule will go through a period of public comment before a final version is implemented by the EPA, prior to next year’s presidential election.
