For Immediate Release, August 21, 2018

Contact: Vera Pardee, (858) 717-1488, vpardee@biologicaldiversity.org

Trump Administration Unveils Dirty Power Plan

WASHINGTON— The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency released today a proposed replacement of the Clean Power Plan that would let states decide whether and how to limit power-plant pollution. It would also incentivize companies to keep aging coal plants in operation rather than replace them with cleaner energy projects.

“This plan will unleash massive soot, smog and disease and push us deeper into climate catastrophe,” said Vera Pardee, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Trump is doubling down on our dirtiest power sources and it’s going to send polar bears, ice seals and other wildlife over the edge of extinction. But like most of his environmental rollbacks, this proposal mangles the facts, the law and the science, and won’t survive in court.”

Background

The nation’s fleet of fossil-fuel power plants is the largest stationary source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The Clean Power Plan, finalized by the Obama administration in 2015, imposed the first-ever nationwide limits on carbon pollution from power plants.

Power plants also emit pollutants that cause asthma and other health problems. According to the Trump EPA’s own analysis, the proposed replacement rule would lead to up to 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030.

In October 2017 then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a proposal to repeal the rule. Compared to the Clean Power Plan, the proposed replacement would release at least 12 times the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the next decade.

Today’s proposal is the latest in a wave of attacks on climate and wildlife, including efforts to roll back clean car standards and gut the Endangered Species Act.