On Monday morning, the Environmental Protection Agency released its proposed rule to limit the amount of carbon pollution that existing power plants can dump into the atmosphere. This is the most significant move President Obama has made to address the direct causes of climate change.
The Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1970 and amended in 1990, is finally getting to tackle carbon pollution from the nation’s 491 smoke-spewing coal power plants. Contrary to what fossil fuel advocates claim, though, it does not mean that EPA will be directly shutting down coal plants. Each state would have a broad menu of carbon-cutting options, including energy efficiency improvements, adding clean energy sources, implementing a carbon tax, or instituting or joining a cap-and-trade system.
By 2020, states will have to have drop their carbon emissions from existing power plants 25 percent from 2005 levels. By 2030, according to the proposed rule, those emissions will have to drop another 5 percent — to 30 percent — from the same base 2005 level.
Here are 8 things you should know about the new rule:
This is the most significant move any U.S. president has made to curtail carbon pollution in history.
It would be the first-ever action to reduce carbon pollution from an existing source in U.S. history. Using the authority granted to the EPA by the Clean Air Act that Congress passed decades ago, every state will need to find ways to lower the carbon dioxide emissions coming out of the fossil fuel-burning power plants. The electricity sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Dropping those 25 percent in 6 years is significant — it amounts to roughly 300 million tons of annual CO2 reduction.
In the rule filed on Monday, the EPA proposed “state-specific rate-based goals for carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector, as well as guidelines for states to follow in developing plans to achieve the state-specific goals.”
This has additional benefits beyond greenhouse gas emission reduction, dropping pollution that causes soot and smog 25 percent by 2030, according to an EPA fact sheet. The EPA also said it would “avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths” and 150,000 asthma attacks in children. When you lower CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, you also lower the emissions of other pollutants like nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, mercury, and sulfur dioxide.

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Story: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/02/3443593/obama-historic-action-on-climate-change/

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