Obama’s Clean Power Plan Is A Salad Bar For Special Interests

The sweeping, 1560-page rule announced today by the Environmental Protection Agency covers the nation’s entire electricity grid, dictating detailed, state-by-state goals for reducing CO2 emissions more than 30% by 2030. To meet those goals, states will have to shut down coal-fired power plants and encourage utilities to get their electricity from lower-emissions sources like wind and solar, as well as efficiency programs and nukes.

 

Just as the Affordable Care Act has driven health insurers, doctors and drug companies  to Washington in hopes of steering the rules their way, the Clean Energy Plan creates huge opportunities for profit or loss based on how regulators tweak a rule here or there.

 

Embedded in the rule is a Clean Energy Incentive Plan, for example, that will give states extra CO2 credits — allowing them to delay some of the politically painful costs of shutting down coal plants — for encouraging the early rollout of wind and solar projects, especially in “low-income communities.” That will give venture capitalists an incentive to join forces with community activists to propose renewable projects in their neighborhoods, with environmental groups hovering over the process, possibly trading their support in exchange for donations and assistance on their own pet causes. The Sierra Club already has a suit pending against the EPA for failing to take Title VI civil-rights impacts into account with environmental permits.

 

Read More: Obama’s Clean Power Plan Is A Salad Bar For Special Interests