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EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has announced that EPA will repeal the so-called Clean Power Plan.
The CPP, a regulation promulgated by the Obama EPA in October 2015, was the centerpiece of the prior administration's program to achieve emissions reductions of so-called "greenhouse gases" as prescribed by the Paris climate accord.
The goal was supposedly to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by some 30 plus percent by 2030.
To achieve that goal, the CPP basically set emissions limits that could not be met so long as coal-burning plants were part of the electricity system, thereby forcing all the coal plants to close.
Oil plants and even those fired by natural gas would have been on the chopping block as the strictures tightened with the approach of the 2030 deadline. Associated with the CPP were many tens of billions of dollars of costs, all destined to make their way into your electricity bill.
In February 2016, in response to litigation brought by the majority of states and many other parties, the Supreme Court stayed enforcement of the CPP. Subsequently the litigation made its way before the en banc DC Circuit, which has been holding the matter in abeyance while it waits to see what Trump will do. Looks like that litigation will now be moot, undoubtedly soon to be replaced by new litigation seeking to compel the government to regulate and restrict greenhouse gases.
EPA's release does not really get into the question of whether CO2 from power plants is any kind of environmental problem, or whether restricting CO2 emissions is or is not a good idea.
Instead, its main thrust is that the section of the Clean Air Act mainly relied on by the Obama EPA, namely Section 111, does not in fact give EPA sufficient legal authority to support the CPP. According to the new administration EPA's legal analysis, Section 111 only authorizes EPA to regulate emissions from individual sources of pollutants, rather than completely transforming an entire electricity system. This was actually a principal argument advanced by the litigants in the case challenging the CPP. And it is a good argument.
In any event, the CPP is going to be withdrawn.
Withdrawing the "biggest-in-history" government regulatory power grab -- that's a pretty big development on the climate front for one day.
But there's another one that may be even bigger. Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia, made a speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. With this speech, Australia takes another big step toward joining the ranks of the climate apostates.
here are some excerpts from Abbott's speech today:
Hydro aside, renewable energy should properly be referred to as intermittent and unreliable power.
When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, power doesn’t flow.
Wind and solar power are like sailing ships; cheaper than powered boats, to be sure, but we stopped using sail for transport because it couldn’t be trusted to turn up on time.
Because the weather is unpredictable, you never really know when renewable power is going to work.
Its marginal cost is low but so is its reliability, so in the absence of industrial scale batteries, it always needs matching capacity from dependable coal, gas, hydro, or nuclear energy. This should always have been obvious.
In the longer term, we need less theology and more sense.
We need evidence based policy rather than “policy based evidence”.
Even if reducing emissions really is necessary to save the planet, our effort, however Herculean, is barely-better-than-futile; because Australia’s total annual emissions are exceeded by just the annual increase in China’s.
Should Australia close down its steel industry; watch passively while its aluminum industry moves offshore to places less concerned about emissions; export coal, but not use it themselves; and deliberately increase power prices for people who can’t install their own solar panels and batteries?
Of course not, but these are the consequences of 'green' policies.
That’s the reality no one has wanted to face for a long time: that we can't reduce emissions without hurting the economy; that’s the truth that can no longer be avoided.
http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2017/10/10/two-big-developments-in-the-world-of-climate-hysteria