The cuts are equivalent to canceling pollution from two-thirds of U.S. cars and trucks. Obama's climate target: 30 percent

EPA officially called Monday for requiring the nation’s existing power plants to cut their greenhouse gas pollution by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 — a step that would advance U.S. efforts to tackle climate change and address a major unmet priority of Barack Obama’s presidency.

States will have until as late as June 2018 to submit their final plans for complying with the rule, an unexpected detail that means some crucial decisions will take place after Obama leaves office.


The proposed cuts outlined in the 645-page rule are equivalent to canceling carbon pollution from two-thirds of cars and trucks in the U.S., the agency said.

The 30 percent figure is just an average, and individual states would have widely varying requirements for how much they would have to slash their pollution levels. The calculations are so complex that some industry consultants were spending most of the day trying to decipher them.

The draft rule supplied an instant campaign issue for Republicans, who are already pounding vulnerable Democratic candidates as accomplices in a job-destroying, Obama-led “war on coal.” Legal challenges from some states and industry groups are considered inevitable, but EPA has won a string of recent court victories that have boosted the agency’s confidence in its strategy.

Meanwhile, some environmentalists were already debating whether the proposed cuts are steep enough, despite overall applause from major green groups that call the rule a big milestone.

Former Vice President Al Gore called the rule “the most important step taken to combat the climate crisis in our country’s history.”

“This is the beginning of the end of America’s long, dirty power plant era,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the cap-and-trade bill that died in Congress during Obama’s first term. “These new carbon-cutting targets will shift the American clean energy revolution that has already started into overdrive, creating jobs and cutting the pollution that threatens our health, our environment, and our future.”

But the coal industry immediately went on the attack, predicting the rule will mean higher electric bills and rolling blackouts.

“If these rules are allowed to go into effect, the administration for all intents and purposes is creating America’s next energy crisis,” said Mike Duncan, CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

In contrast, EPA predicted that electric bills will drop an average of 8 percent when the rule is fully implemented in 2030, thanks to energy efficiency improvements that it will accelerate.

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced they will hold a hearing on the rule during the week of June 16. They also resurrected Obama’s infamous pre-White House remark from 2008 that “under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“We have already witnessed the failures and consequences of a government takeover of our health care system, and we can’t afford the same mistakes with government takeover of our energy sector,” said Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who chairs the panel’s Energy and Power Subcommittee.

The sprawling rule includes different interim and final pollution goals for various states and regions, with huge variations based partly on cuts the states have already achieved and what EPA thinks they’re capable of in the future.

For instance, North Dakota would need to cut its pollution just 11 percent below what it emitted in 2012, as measured in pounds of carbon dioxide emitted for each megawatt-hour of electricity, and coal-heavy West Virginia would need to cut just 20 percent, based on tables EPA provided with the rule.

In contrast, Washington state would need to cut its emissions 72 percent, though EPA said it could meet most of that goal by closing one coal plant that’s already scheduled to shut down around 2020. New York state would have a 44 percent goal, but it’s part of a nine-state cap-and-trade network whose carbon emissions already fell 40 percent from 2005 to 2012.

What wasn’t obvious even to many experts was how these numbers translate to how difficult it will be for any individual state to meet its goals.

On the other hand, states will be able to choose from a menu of options for complying, with possible choices including joining regional cap-and-trade networks.

“The good news is states, cities, and businesses have already blazed the trail. Our clean energy revolution is unfolding in front of us,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said when announcing the rule Monday morning, after getting whoops and cheers from a roomful of supporters. “We are not doing cutting edge work here folks, we are just opening up the door for cutting edge to happen.”

McCarthy also took aim at critics who maintain that the rule would cause skyrocketing prices and make electric service unreliable. The real danger comes from climate change, she said.

“I’m a little tired of people pointing to the polar vortex as a reason for not acting on climate,” she said. “It is the exact opposite. It is a wake-up call.”

After the rule becomes final a year from now, the states will have until June 30, 2016, to submit their initial plans to EPA for complying with the rule. But some states could get a one-year extension, with a final plan due June 30, 2017.

And states that want to join in multistate plans are eligible for a two-year extension, which means the states’ final plans would be due by June 30, 2018.

The rule will cover 1,000 fossil-fuel-fired power plants, overwhelmingly those burning coal or natural gas. But the greatest burden will fall on coal.

EPA sought to downplay predictions that the plan will force the shutdown of hundreds of coal-fired plants, saying plant retirements are already expected to happen for economic reasons. It noted that the average age of a U.S. coal plant is 42 years.

The relatively early baseline year for calculating the cuts, 2005, was an item on the industry’s wish list. Many green groups had pushed for the reductions to be calculated from lower-pollution years like 2010 or 2012, which would yield sharper cuts for the same percentage reduction. U.S. carbon emissions fell significantly after 2005, for reasons including slumping demand and increased use of natural gas instead of coal.

Besides the rule’s carbon-cutting benefits, EPA argues that the reductions will cut enough soot and smog as a side effect to avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths and 150,000 asthma attacks. The administration calculates that the rule will create $55 billion to $93 billion in economic benefits, compared with just $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion in costs.

Obama reached out directly to House and Senate Democrats on Sunday to urge them to champion the rule, according to a source familiar with the conference call.

The president’s message to lawmakers was that “industry can do this,” the source said, adding that Obama cited past examples — acid rain regulations and cars’ fuel-efficiency standards — where naysayers’ predictions of economic ruin had fallen flat. “So he was making very much the innovation case and the anti-doom-and-gloom case.”

The president added that “he’s going to need all of these members out there making this case,” the source said.

But some Democrats facing tough election battles are already running away from the rule. They include coal-state Democrats like West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall and Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Details of the rule have been the subject of much speculation in recent months — including the baseline year, the size of the cuts and the way they would be divided among the states. But it’s long been expected that the sprawling EPA proposal will allow states nearly free rein in deciding how to make the cuts.

Some states could join regional cap-and-trade networks, similar to the nationwide carbon-trading system that Congress toyed with passing in Obama’s first term. Others could encourage utilities to shut down coal plants or switch to natural gas, which produces half the carbon emissions. Many states are likely to expand their reliance on zero-carbon nuclear, solar or wind power.

Most early carbon reductions will result from programs that lessen demand for power by helping residents and businesses conserve.

The cuts could significantly enhance the U.S. bargaining position at next year’s international global climate talks in Paris. The United States is the world’s second-largest producer of carbon pollution, running close behind China.

And the nation’s biggest source of greenhouse gases is the electric power industry, making coal — the nation’s cheapest, most abundant but dirtiest power source — the big target. While coal accounts for about 37 percent of the U.S. power supply, it yields about three-quarters of the industry’s CO 2 .

Still, the rule shows signs of EPA’s willingness to give the industry credit for the 16 percent reduction in carbon pollution it saw from 2005 to 2012.

That also means the cuts may not be as sharp as some supporters had hoped. A 30 percent reduction from 2005’s power plant carbon emissions would bring pollution levels just 17 percent below what they were in 2012, based on EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory.

Obama’s critics are already on the attack, however.

“The administration has set out to kill coal and its 800,000 jobs,” Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi said Saturday in the GOP’s weekly address. “If it succeeds in death by regulation, we’ll all be paying a lot more money for electricity — if we can get it. Our pocketbook will be lighter, but our country will be darker.”

Meanwhile, environmental and public health groups were planning a months-long campaign to build support for the rule, including a national cable television ad buy set to launch this week. And greens were happy to cheer the rule even before all the details came out.

“This is tremendous progress on the most pressing problem of our time,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, from the League of Conservation Voters.

Nevertheless, some environmentalists are likely to push for a more stringent final regulation.

The “current reduction levels proposed by the administration will be fine if complemented by binding cuts by the Chinese. But absent that, we’d need to see stronger domestic cuts,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program.

Environmental groups have recently expressed optimism at indications that China could take its pilot cap and trade programs national in 2018. And the U.S. climate rule could also change: Administration officials said in early briefings that the final rule could end up with stricter targets, one source familiar with the meetings said.

EPA’s crackdown on existing coal plants follows the administration’s dramatic tightening of cars’ and trucks’ fuel efficiency requirements during Obama’s first term, as well as a proposal the agency released in September to limit carbon pollution from future power plants. But the rule announced Monday is Obama’s biggest stride on climate change since 2010, when the Senate failed to pass a cap-and-trade bill that would have placed a price on carbon pollution.

With hopes for major climate legislation long since vanished, Obama promised in his second inaugural speech last year to go his own way.

Observers anticipated that the new rule will go well beyond calling for the meager pollution cuts that could be achieved by requiring sometimes-costly efficiency upgrades at individual power plants.

Instead, the rule is expected to call for reductions beyond the plants’ “fence line” — an industry term that essentially means looking for cuts across an entire state or region. That approach could allow energy-efficiency programs or increases in low-carbon power to compensate for a coal plant’s pollution, for example, and experts say it allows for vastly sharper reductions.

But the beyond-the-fence approach is legally untested, and it’s likely to be a major focus of lawsuits seeking to overturn the rule.

States’ compliance plans are likely to vary widely, and many will lean heavily on actions already underway. For instance, 30 states require that a certain percentage of their power come from zero-carbon energy sources like wind, solar and hydroelectric, while California and nine East Coast states are involved in carbon-credit trading programs.

The trading programs funnel their revenue into programs aimed at cutting demand for power, from enabling customers to scale back power use during peak hours to helping manufacturers install more energy-efficient equipment.

“Obviously, there’s no emissions from a kilowatt you don’t use,” said Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president at Advanced Energy Economy, a trade group representing energy-saving businesses that have a lot to gain from federal requirements to cut carbon.

At next year’s climate talks in Paris, Obama may be able to show that the U.S. is meeting his pledge to cut its carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. He also pledged 80 percent cuts by 2050.

Achieving such steep cuts, which climate scientists call necessary to dial back the threats of rising seas, acidic oceans and shifting ecology, would require a drastically rethought system of generating and using power in the United States.

Andrew Restuccia and Darren Goode contributed to this report.