Clean Power Plan: Obama’s attempt to persuade the world about climate action
On August 3, 2015, President Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, an important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants, in order to take real action on climate change. It represents one part of the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, launched in June 2013.
The President’s aim is to show the world that the United States is committed to leading global efforts to address climate change, well in advance with the COP21, that will take place in Paris next December. Obama called actions on this issue “a moral obligation”, making reference to the encyclical Laudato Si’, by Pope Francis.
The plan’s supporters argue that it will boost job. Nevertheless, Republican presidential candidates have complained that Obama’s new measures will lead to economic losses and higher electricity prices.
How will the plan work? – The Clean Power Plan establishes state-by-state targets for carbon emissions reductions, and it offers a flexible framework under which states may meet those targets. The final version would reduce national electricity sector emissions by an estimated 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Each state must develop and implement plans by September 2016, that ensure the power plants achieve targets for 2030, based on reducing its power sector CO2 emissions, or its emissions per megawatt hour of electricity use. Final complete state plans must be submitted no later than September 2018.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculates general targets, in order to make existing coal plants more efficient, run existing gas plants for longer hours and increase electricity generation from renewables. The plan, in fact, provides a number of options to cut carbon emissions, that includes investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, natural gas, and nuclear power, and shifting away from coal-fired power.
According to UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists), 31 states have already made commitments that would put them more toward meeting the 2020 benchmarks set out by the EPA, and 14 of those states are already on track to meet or exceed them. This had been possible expecially because of the recession that followed the global financial crisis.
Expected impacts – President Obama underlines several potential benefits of the Clean Power Plan:
- Provide significant public health benefits for future generations, such as the reduction of premature deaths and asthma attacks in children;
- Drive investment and innovation in the electricity sector and in renewable energy, by improving their efficiency;
- Create tens of thousands of jobs;
- Save the average American family nearly $85 on their annual energy bill in 2030 and save consumers a total of $155 billion from 2020-2030;
- Continue American leadership on climate change.
Domestic debate – Obama’s Clean Power Plan faces opposition from Republicans and coal industry, saying that it will push up energy prices and destroy jobs. So that the plan’s opponents in industry, the states and Congress are already trying to undermine it on Capitol Hill and in the courts.
Nevertheless, as The New York Times has underlined, there is nothing radical about the plan, for several reasons. First, the Clean Power Plan does not aim to tackle overall emissions, but it fixes targets only for power plant, which were responsible for 31% of US carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in 2013. Then, concerning job, there are already more Americans working in the clean energy sector than oil and gas. Finally, the plan appears not so ambitious if we compare it with the EU action on climate change.
However, US leadership on this issue could be essential with other nations, on the way of the UN climate change conference in Paris, next December. So that, the Clean Power Plan could be more important than the domestic response, setting an important example, if President Obama could persuade other countries about climate action. And of course the most important one will be China, the world first-largest greenhouse gas emitter, before the US.