Is Pruitt’s 2014 Plan a Blueprint for Carbon Rule Replacement?

Bloomberg BNA discusses EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s plan on carbon dioxide reductions with Marlo Lewis. 

A plan that Scott Pruitt floated when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general would provide only one-tenth of the carbon dioxide reductions envisioned in the EPA’s power plant rule—but it could form the basis of the Trump administration’s replacement as it dismantles Obama-era regulations.

The 2014 plan, which focuses on efficiency improvements at individual power plants, could sidestep thornier legal issues opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan—including Pruitt himself—raised in lawsuits over the rule, attorneys said. Pruitt’s plan would merely require utilities to operate at peak efficiency. In keeping with his pledge to restore cooperative federalism, it envisions a more “ministerial” role for the EPA while states take the regulatory lead.

“That basically means allowing the plants to do what they’re doing anyway especially if they’re in a competitive energy market,” Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the free market-oriented Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg BNA. “They’d always be looking to improve efficiency by a point or two from year to year.”

Read the full article at Bloomberg BNA