Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
6/27/2014
One year after President Barack Obama announced his Climate Action Plan the measure remains controversial. The Administration took hits this week on the anniversary of the announcement of the plan from those opposed to the measures who claimed thus far the plan has been “all pain, no gain.” Supporters of the plan however have praised the progress made in the past year toward the president’s climate goals, though acknowledged that there was more to be done. “The administration has made at least some progress on most of the plan’s 75 goals; many of the specific tasks outlined have been completed. In several key areas, the administration has taken important first steps, but it is too early to gauge their success or ultimate impact,” a Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) report released this week said.
The C2ES report says that a path to achieving the 75 goals laid out in the Climate Action Plan is somewhat limited by a congress unlikely to enact any major climate legislation, leaving the Administration only executive powers to attempt to reach the goals. On several fronts however, the report says, the Administration has made marked progress. “At the time he announced the plan, the president ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to propose regulations covering new power plants by September 2013 and existing power plants by June 2014. The agency met both deadlines,” the report says referencing proposed EPA regulations for new and existing power plants. The regulations for new-build power plants largely mandate the use of carbon capture and sequestration on all new-build power plants. The recently announced proposed rule for existing power plants sets emissions guidelines for each state and requires them to develop a plan to meet those targets.
Advocates of the coal industry, however, saw no reason to celebrate the anniversary of the president’s climate action plan. “The president isn’t the only one getting the traditional gift of paper on his one-year anniversary, so are Americans across the country who are receiving pinks slips and skyrocketing utility bills courtesy of Obama’s Climate Action Plan,” said Laura Sheehan, senior vice president for communications at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity in an ACCCE release. “EPA’s newest carbon regulations, however, are truly the icing on the cake, utilizing an ‘All Pain, No Gain,’ strategy that will cost consumers as much as $8.8 billion a year through 2030, while reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by a mere four percent—equivalent to decreasing sea level rise by less than the thickness of three sheets of paper—over 100 years.”
