What Is The Clean Power Plan? EPA Administrator Pruitt Announces Withdraw

During a press conference Monday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said he would sign a proposed rule to “withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration,” on Tuesday. He made this announcement before any official news release was made available by the EPA on the proposed rule or the plan to withdraw from the Obama-era environmental regulations.

This isn’t the first time Pruitt and the administration have announced actions to repeal regulations aimed at keeping the environment clean. President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement earlier this year. Pruitt has also requested a review or possible repeal of the Clean Water Rule for 2018.

In March, Trump signed the Energy Independence Executive Order that called for a review of the Clean Power Plan “to protect thousands of jobs and strengthen energy security, while also ensuring that our policies provide clean air and clean water for all of our citizens,” according to the EPA website.

What is the Clean Power Plan?

Information currently on the EPA’s website about the Clean Power Plan has to do mostly with the plans to withdraw and dismantle it. The original plan can be found on the EPA archive website. The plan was announced in August 2015 by President Barack Obama after years of research and collaboration between the public and the government, says the archived EPA site.

The plan outlined standards for power plants across the United States and set customized carbon pollution cuts for each state. The Clean Power Plan goal was to cut carbon pollution nationwide through regulating how much power each state harnessed from “dirty” sources like coal, but the plan also gave states the freedom to make decisions about how it met its emissions goals.

The EPA estimated that once the plan was fully in place, by 2030, the levels of carbon pollution from the power sector specifically would be 32 percent lower than 2005 levels. Additionally, this reduction in pollutants would also help prevent 3,600 premature deaths each year, 90,000 asthma attacks each year and 300,000 missed days of work or school each year. The decrease in health risks as well as the benefits for the environment of cutting emissions were the end goal of the plan.

The plan was proposed in 2015 and earlier this year in January the EPA announced it was going to deny most of the petitions for reconsideration and all of the petitions for administrative stay on the plan.

Trump and Pruitt have blamed the Clean Power Plan for the shrinking number of jobs in the coal industry and said that getting rid of it will bring those jobs back. The Associated Press reported Monday that the EPA will likely declare that the Clean Power Plan exceeds federal law and held power plants to unrealistic standards that could not be met.