CEI Responds to EPA’s Rules: Clean Power Plan and Beyond

Today the Obama administration’s EPA released two final rules and a proposed rule that are considered a major part of the President’s climate agenda.

Competitive Enterprise Institute experts responded:

CEI’s Myron Ebell offered this initial response to the EPA’s release of the final rule in its so-called Clean Power Plan today:

“The Obama EPA’s so-called ‘Clean Power’ Plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants is colossally expensive, blatantly illegal, and totally pointless.  It will fulfill President Obama’s promise made when he was running for president in 2008 to “necessarily skyrocket” people’s electric rates.  Consumers, particularly in the heartland States that have affordable electricity from coal-fired plants, are going to see their rates skyrocket, just as the President promised.  Workers are going to lose their jobs as energy-intensive manufacturing is forced out of the country.  The Congress must act quickly and decisively to block the President’s disastrous climate policies.”   

CEI’s Marlo Lewis offered this initial response to the EPA’s release of rules for new electric utility sources today:

“Because the EPA does not anticipate anyone building new coal-fired power plants anyway, evidently, the new source performance standards rule’s value is purely instrumental – to provide the regulatory springboard for the so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) for existing power plants.

EPA’s modification of the new source rule makes one of the CPP’s legal vulnerabilities more conspicuous. The CO2 performance standards in the CPP were already more stringent than those in the proposed new source rule. Now the CPP standards are much more stringent. Never before in the history of the Clean Air Act have Section 111 existing source performance standards been more stringent than the corresponding new source standards.”

CEI’s William Yeatman offered this initial response to the EPA’s proposed rule for a federal plan for greenhouse gas emissions from electric utility released today:

“As we predicted, EPA’s proposed federal implementation (FIP) entails two emissions trading schemes. Of course, Congress has expressly and repeatedly rejected such ‘cap and trade’ schemes, which raises an obvious question: Why is it appropriate for EPA to impose major policies that were refused by Congress? In practice, emissions are virtually synonymous with energy use, and, as a result, EPA’s FIP is not inaccurately labeled an energy rationing program. Talk about mission creep!”

See more from CEI on the so-called Clean Power Plan and the EPA’s climate agenda: