Trump Administration Weakens Climate Plan To Help Coal Plants Stay Open

President Trump has thrown his latest lifeline to the ailing coal industry, significantly weakening one of former President Obama's key policies to address climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency released the final version of its Affordable Clean Energy rule Wednesday. It's supported by the coal industry, but it's not clear it will be enough to stop more coal-fired power plants from closing.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler made the announcement at the agency's headquarters before a crowd that included coal miners wearing work clothes and hard hats.

Wheeler echoed arguments coal industry supporters have made, saying the Obama administration overstepped it's authority under federal law when it issued the more sweeping Clean Power Plan in 2015.

Unlike that plan, Wheeler said the new rule "adheres to the four corners of the Clean Air Act. EPA sets the best system of emission reductions, and then states set the standards of performance. This is how the Clean Air Act says the process should work," said Wheeler.

Gina McCarthy was EPA administrator during the Obama administration and maintains the rule she helped craft was legal. She criticized the Trump administration's new rule.

"I believe this is the first rule in EPA's history that acknowledges the existential threat of climate change, but by the agency's own admission does absolutely nothing to stop it," McCarthy said in a statement.

Obama's Clean Power Plan was far broader in scope, setting state-by-state goals for reducing emissions of planet warming carbon dioxide emissions. The rule let states figure out how to meet those goals, but made it likely they would close coal plants since they are the biggest emitters of CO2.

By contrast, the Trump administration's ACE rule is more narrow and regulates emissions of individual power plants. It will require power plant operators to make the plants more efficient and release fewer emissions per megawatt of electricity generated.

The administration's aim is to give coal power plants a chance to stay in business longer despite market pressure from cheaper natural gas, wind and solar.

Among those who've argued for a "within the fence line" approach to regulating carbon dioxide from power plants is the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). It represents more than 900 local electric cooperatives around the country and argued the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan would have disproportionately hurt small, rural utilities that are more likely to depend on existing coal-fired power plants.

"This final rule represents a more flexible path forward that will minimize the cost to consumers and preserve the reliability of the electric grid," said NRECA CEO Jim Matheson.

Matheson's group says its member utilities serve some of the poorest counties in the country and the cost of replacing coal plants with cleaner alternatives would raise rates for customers who can't afford to pay more. NRECA says not only would they have to pay for new forms of generation but they'd still have to pay off the cost of coal plants that would have been retired early.

The ACE rule could help some coal plants operate a little longer, but most experts agree it's not a long-term solution to the coal industry's problems. The main reason coal plants are closing now is because they are more expensive to operate than natural gas and renewable energy facilities.

Replacement of Obama signature climate strategy

Former President Barack Obama announced his administration's Clean Power Plan in August of 2015, just a few months before the international summit on climate change in Paris.

Obama wanted the plan in place before the meeting, as NPR reported then, because his administration was pushing other countries--notably China, India and Brazil--to also pledge aggressive cuts.

His plan aimed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the country's power plants 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. But it never went into effect because of court challenges.

Despite that, the country is well on its way to meeting that goal a decade ahead of schedule. Despite a 2.7 percent increase in energy related CO2 emissions last year, those emissions have declined 28 percent since 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The coal industry and its supporters opposed it from the start because it would have meant fewer coal-fired power plants operating in the U.S. They joined with more than two dozen states who filed a legal challenge to stop the rule. In court they argued the Obama administration overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act.

They successfully stalled implementation of the Clean Power Plan, but it didn't help the coal industry.

Carbon pollution from power plants has declined mostly because of slower than expected growth in electricity demand and big changes in the fuels used to generate power.

"Underlying market forces have moved faster to reduce power plant climate pollution than the Obama administration forecasted," says David Doniger with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The owners of coal-fired power plants are shutting them down because electricity generated from less carbon intensive natural gas and carbon-free renewable energy is cheaper.

Doniger says the country should have responded to this unexpected, market-fueled development by restricting carbon emissions even more to address climate change. Instead, President Trump vows to help the struggling coal industry. But that campaign isn't faring well.

The Sierra Club tracks coal plant closing announcements and says 52 coal-fired power plants have either shut down or announced they will shut down since Trump was elected. Even Trump's effort to save individual coal power plants has failed to reverse the trend.

The latest rule change is not likely to mean a brighter future for coal. The Energy Information Administration's most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook projects coal's share of electricity generation will continue to decline and reach just 23 percent in 2020. At the same time, the agency says the share of the nation's electricity that comes from natural gas and renewable energy is expected to keep increasing.

Adding to the pressure on coal, more cities, states, businesses and even some utilities are committing to carbon-free electricity by mid-century.

The legal dispute over how best to regulate CO2 from the power sector is not over. Environmental groups vow to challenge the Trump administration's ACE rule in court. Shortly after the EPA's announcement New York's Attorney General also said she intends to bring a legal challenge. [Copyright 2019 NPR]