Trump Administration Continues Rollback of Obama-Era CO2 Regulations

On August 21, 2018, the Trump administration released a proposed CO2 plan that will permit states to establish emission standards for coal power plants rather than encouraging their closure. The new proposal will provide coal companies with a strong financial incentive to keep their plants in operation, rather than the Obama administration’s goal of replacing them with power plants using renewable energy.  According to the EPA, the proposed rule, named the Affordable Clean Energy (rule), contains several key components:

  •  a revised determination of the best
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The Scorecard

In May 2017, we reported about the intentions of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to rebalance the EPA. At that time, Pruitt discussed core values and stressed that going forward the process and rule making will matter. One of the customs that Pruitt expressed he wanted to shed was “the federal government [being] actively involved in picking winners and losers by using regulations and the power to penalize…” Pruitt contended that the EPA’s mission is and should be clean air, water quality, and land remediation.

On …

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The Social Cost of Carbon — A Crucially Important Number Few Have Heard of and its Potential Impact on Environmental Regulations

There is a number few have heard of underlying many environmental regulations that are directly related to climate change — the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). As noted in a recent article in The Economist, climate economists refer to the SCC as “the most important number you’ve never heard of.” Essentially, the SCC attempts to capture in a single number how much “damage” a one-ton release of CO2 today will have in the future, expressed in today’s dollars. Of course, estimating the amount …

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