A look at climate change plan and impact on US

The plan aims to cut carbon pollution 32 percent by the year 2030. Stanford University, Brookings Institution, Friends of the Earth, R Street Institute and others submitted joint comments to the EPA advocating for a carbon tax in the final Clean Power Plan. I’m cautiously optimistic about the plan considering Texas’ unique challenges in meeting these new standards. The proposals are similar to those that have been tried and scaled back by Germany and other nations because of their impact on employment. Industries and agencies do not want to undergo that again. The Home Performance Coalition is supportive of this approach and encouraged that the final Clean Power Plan reward states for early investment in clean energy, renewable energy, and energy efficiency, especially in low-income communities.

Power stations account for 40% of US emissions of carbon dioxide. According to WRI, the power is responsible for 30.8 percent of the U.S.’s total emissions.

Obama said the main topic of discussion with Ban was about the “urgency of a world response to the threat of climate change”, adding that the U.S. and UN could be the leaders in addressing the “critical issue that faces humankind going forward”.

Phasing out coal, the dirtiest form of power generation, likely will feature prominently in many states’ plans.

Ohio EPA spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer says the agency will work on a state implementation plan. The EPA started by tallying up all the coal, oil, and natural gas power plants across the United States, placed them into two broad categories, and then figured out their average emission rates in 2012 in each of the country’s three main electric-grid regions. Alaska and Hawaii are isolated from the rest of the nation’s electrical grid, leaving EPA officials without the data they used to set goals for the other states.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office still is studying the 1,560-page Clean Power Plan released by the President Barack Obama administration this week, but Schuette has voiced concern.

“It is a major contribution to the success of the Paris conference on climate change”.

Obama said: “We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence”.

“We’re already well on course to actually exceed those numbers”, Tidwell said. Even though he recently admitted climate change is real and caused at least in part by humans, former governor and presidential contender Jeb Bush decried the new rules.