Joe Biden Has Another Big F*cking Deal For Climate, Again
Joe Biden Has Another Big F*cking Deal For Climate, Again
Come on, nerds, come learn about it!
You may have noticed that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has been rolling out a hell of a lot of new regulations. Earlier this month it was big student loan reforms and a massive improvement in how public lands are managed, then this week we had better pay and working conditions for working Americans, minimum staffing ratios for nursing homes, and even improved service on airlines.
That’s not only because it’s an election year, though Joe & Kamala certainly do like to point out that where the Other Guy rages (and wants to raise inflation!) they’ve been busy making Americans’ lives better. But the bigger reason is that the administration wants to get new rules finalized prior to May, to keep them from being tossed out in the next Congress via the Congressional Review Act, which Donald Trump and his cronies used to reverse a bunch of Barack Obama’s environmental regulations.
The administration has also been busy on climate and energy, what with new EPA vehicle emissions standards, a big $7 billion grant program — announced on Earth Day — to get solar power to almost a million low-income households, and on Thursday, a pair of big policy announcements that will significantly ramp up the transition to clean power by 1) cutting emissions from power plants, and 2) beefing up the power grid so clean energy can be transmitted from where it’s generated to where it’s needed.
Emissions from the power sector account for about a quarter of US greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-biggest source of our emissions (after transportation). Electric power used to be the top source of emissions, before power plants began switching to fossil gas, which is much cleaner. As a result, total US greenhouse emissions peaked in 2007 and have been declining ever since, although not quickly enough to meet our Paris climate agreement commitment. Renewables, especially solar, are increasingly beating fossil gas on price, but we’ll need regulations and incentives to give the energy transition a push in order to meet Biden’s commitment to decarbonizing electric power by 2035 and getting the nation to net zero emissions by 2050.
Because there’s a ton of explainering to do, we’ll look at the emissions-cutting rules today, and follow that up with a separate piece on the goodie bag of grid improvements. Let’s call that Tuesday, since Monday is my day off.
Power Plant Emissions: ‘Clean Up Or Close’
The package of final emissions rules released this week are in some ways quite simple, as Canary Media explains in a brief summary:
[The rules] will require individual states to craft plans for ensuring that coal-fired plants slated to stay open past 2039 control 90 percent of their carbon pollution from 2032 onward. Newly built “baseload” fossil-gas-fired power plants that operate more than 40 percent of the year must do the same.
The EPA estimates that the rule will prevent 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution by 2047, the equivalent of taking 328 million gasoline-powered cars off the road — which the EPA fact sheet shoulda also pointed out is way more than the roughly 275 million cars and light trucks currently registered. Wow. On top of that, the rule would bring “up to $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits” over the next 20 years.
The rule applies to all coal plants and any new “baseload” gas plants — those expected to run at least 40 percent of the time — but it doesn’t cover the huge fleet of existing gas plants, which currently generate most of the nation’s electricity. The agency announced in February that it would instead write a separate rule for existing gas plants. That step, which will cut powerplant emissions even more comprehensively, may not be finalized until after the November election, so there’s one more reason to keep Republicans and Trump out of power.
What It Means: Bye-Bye Coal, And Fossil Gas Ain’t The Answer Either
The requirement that coal plants find a way to eliminate 90 percent of their emissions by 2032 effectively accelerates the end of coal for power generation, which was inevitable anyway. Roughly 70 percent of US coal plants have already closed, and last year, coal generated only 16 percent of electric power, a new record low. In addition to the emissions rule, three other final rules also impose strict new limits on mercury, coal ash, and pollution of wastewater, to put an end to the environmental degradation caused by coal.
As Heatmap News explains, the coal-plant rules vary with the amount of time the plants will remain in operation. Those scheduled to shut down by 2032 anyway will be exempt altogether, creating a powerful incentive to move up plant retirements.
The restrictions on emissions for new fossil gas plants will also mean that to stay in operation, they too would need to capture nearly all of the carbon they emit, which will require utilities to reconsider their plans to start building a lot of gas plants to meet the growing demand for electricity, mostly from data centers. The Inflation Reduction Act has generous subsidies for carbon capture and storage, but the technology is still fairly new, controversial, and hasn’t been deployed at scale. That said, IRA incentives and the rule for gas plants may very well drive the tech faster, and if the carbon that’s captured isn’t replaced by greater emissions, hooray.
The other option, obviously, would be for utilities to meet coming demand with renewables, as administration officials pointed out when previewing the new rule. Thanks to the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, carbon-free power generation, including battery storage, already beats the cost of building new gas plants. Going forward, the administration is confident renewables will be the far more cost-effective and reliable way to meet increasing demand by 2032, when the emissions limits fully kick in.
“We are anticipated to add more capacity to the grid this year than we have in 20 years — two decades — and the projection is that 96 percent of that new power capacity will be clean,” Ali Zaidi, the national climate adviser to the White House, said on a press call. […]
Clean energy “is something that’s providing power to 70 million homes on the grid today,” he said. “And if you look at where we are today, I think it gives you a sense of why we can be ambitious moving forward.”
The Dirty Energy Empire Sues Back
Because there’s a lot of money at stake, the new rules will have to survive inevitable court challenges from both industry and from red state attorneys general. But the administration knows that very well, and as EPA Chief Michael Regan said in the press call announcing the rules, the four rules in the emissions-reduction package were written explicitly with an eye to “ensuring that each path taken is durable” to legal challenges.
That’s another good thing about having grownups in charge: The rules are designed to fit within the boundaries of the Supreme Court’s weirdass 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA that threw out Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Jody Freeman, director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, says she believes the rules comply with that ruling, with clear grounding in the Clean Air Act.
Then again, this is the Alito Court we’re talking about, so Freeman also conceded, “The Supreme Court will do what it wants, and it’s shown a particular hostility to EPA rules.”
Yet again, the fate of much of the planet’s ability to sustain human life and civilization will depend at least in part on who wins this fall’s election. Hi ho.
But I’m an optimist: I think we’ll keep that from happening. And as Politico reminds us, it should also help that two of coal’s most stubborn defenders in Washington, Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin, will be leaving the Senate at the end of this year. Even though they’re likely to be replaced by Republicans, those first-termers won’t have anything like the clout of the departing assholes.
Coming soon: The grid goodies announced last week!
PREVIOUSLY!
[Heatmap News / Canary Media / WaPo (gift link) / EPA]
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None of this is sufficient. Physics doesn't care about politics. We do what science demands, or we die. End of story.
Sigh.
If only we had had Gore, we could be zero emission about now.