West Virginia Faces More Stringent Goals in Final Power Plan

US President Barack Obama unveils the Clean Power Plan during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, the US, on Monday.

“I’m convinced no challenge provides a greater threat to the future of the planet”, said Obama.

A few of the changes Obama is making in the final version of the plan go even further in cutting the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

However, it is likely to face legal challenges from several states and the multi-billion-dollar energy industry.

Opponents plan to sue, and to ask the courts to block the rule temporarily.

In his speech, the president recalled that electric power plants produce a few 40 percent of the total carbon pollution in the country, and said that his plan is “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change”. That includes increases in energy efficiency, ramping up the use of renewable energy, switching from coal to natural gas, and becoming part of a cap-and-trade network in which overall emissions are limited and polluters buy and sell rights to release greenhouse gases.

“In many ways, the Clean Power Plan is about leveling the playing field”, said Dr. Marguerite Pennoyer, a physician in Scarborough who specializes in asthma and allergies.

In encouraging states to take strides towards fulfilling the plan, they are allowed to meet the requirements in various ways.

“We have to not only digest the 1,600-page rule, but define what that means in terms of the resources that each state can deal with in terms of meeting its targets”.

“Our power plants are responsible for about a third of America’s carbon pollution – more than our cars, airplanes, and homes combined – and that pollution is fueling climate change”.

“We’re not connected to anybody else’s grid”, Murkowski said back in April at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

Obama said the plan was created to work with states and their individual needs to create a plan for each in the next couple years, rewarding states that act more quickly.

In a few of the states that rely less on coal-fired electricity, such as sun-soaked Nevada and hydroelectric rich Oregon, officials expressed their support and said they were well-positioned to comply.

And while states previously had until 2020 to achieve their targets, they’ll now have an extra two years – until 2022. In other words, what states are already doing to reduce energy demand won’t be included in their baseline the way that other measures, like replacing coal plants with cleaner sources, will be.

Republican Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona called the plan radical and unreasonable.