CEI to EPA: Repeal Unlawful and Destructive Clean Power Plan

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) submitted comments in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule to repeal the so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP). CEI was joined by 19 individuals from free-market organizations in urging EPA to repeal the CPP on the grounds that it is unlawful, economically destructive, and attempts to make the EPA into a national climate policy legislator and energy czar. According to CEI experts, repealing the CPP would stop unelected bureaucrats from implementing a policy of immense economic and political magnitude without congressional approval.

CEI senior fellow Marlo Lewis:

“The Clean Power Plan results in more potential harms than benefits for Americans and should be repealed. By undermining states’ authority over their energy markets, the CPP traps Americans under a harmful policy that will raise their electricity bills and eliminate interstate competition that enables citizens to vote with their feet and escape burdensome regulatory and tax policies,” said Lewis. “And for what? The CPP’s climate impact is vanishingly small—a hypothetical and likely undetectable 0.018°C reduction in average global temperatures by 2100. Such a small change would make no discernible difference in weather patterns, sea levels, or even polar bear populations by century’s end. The climate ‘benefits’ in 2030 at the end of the CPP compliance period would be even more miniscule.”

CEI’s comments were supported by 19 policy experts including: Thomas Pyle from the Institute for Energy Research, Benjamin Zycher from the American Enterprise Institute, Paul Blair from Americans for Tax Reform, and both the president and the founder of 60 Plus Association, among others.

>> Read CEI’s regulatory comments on the EPA’s proposed rule here.