How the US Clean Power Plan Competes with the Environment

China Energy Storage Network News: Last week, the annual U.S. Energy Conference hosted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration came to a close in Washington, and the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan became a hot topic at this conference.

The Clean Power Plan was announced in August last year. The plan proposed the "most stringent emission reduction target in history" of reducing carbon emissions of US power generation companies by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. The plan was opposed by many states as soon as it was announced. In the past year, 24 states have joined the joint lawsuit against the plan. In February this year, the US Supreme Court ruled to suspend the implementation of the plan. Whether the plan can be implemented in the end depends on the final judgment this fall.

Although the implementation of the Clean Power Plan was halted by the Supreme Court, the pace of eliminating coal power and vigorously developing renewable energy in various parts of the United States has not slowed down. The latest statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that the proportion of coal in the primary energy of the United States in 2015 dropped from 18% in 2014 to 16%, and the total coal consumption fell by more than 12% year-on-year, the lowest level since 1982. At the same time, renewable energy continued to expand, with wind power and solar power generation increasing by 31% and 5% respectively in 2015.

Why is it that nearly half of the states oppose the Clean Power Plan and even resort to legal means to hinder its implementation, but in fact the United States is still accelerating on the road of emission reduction? I think the current political environment in the United States and the different governing philosophies of the Democratic and Republican parties are the main reasons for this contradiction. The current political polarization in the United States is obvious, and Republicans usually oppose what Democrats want to do. Twenty of the 24 states that participated in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan are governed by Republicans.

In terms of governing philosophy, Republicans prefer a "small government", which is reflected in their energy policy, which is that they prefer to let the market rather than the government decide which energy to develop, so they will oppose the Clean Power Plan, which has a clear preference for energy selection. However, these states will not oppose the market's choice to develop renewable energy according to economic laws. Michael Tubman, director of the foreign affairs department of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told the author at the energy conference that many states involved in the lawsuit are also working towards emission reduction, because emission reduction and the development of renewable energy have won widespread support from ordinary people and businesses in the United States.

As Tubman said, the public opinion base for emission reduction in the United States is becoming increasingly solid. In recent years, many polls have shown that the American public is increasingly accepting that greenhouse gas emissions lead to global warming, and their support for the development of renewable energy has reached a fairly high level. More than 70% of the public support the vigorous development of wind power and solar energy, while less than 30% support the development of fossil energy.

At the same time, the economic benefits of renewable energy in the United States are getting better and better, and the market forces driving its development are growing. With technological progress and the continuous expansion of global use, the prices of wind power and solar power generation in the United States have continued to fall rapidly in recent years, and investment in related fields has continued to expand. According to a report by Bloomberg's New Energy Finance Company, the total investment in the global renewable energy field reached US$265.8 billion in 2015, more than twice the total investment in fossil energy. The United States' investment in renewable energy increased by 19% from 2014 to US$44.1 billion, ranking second in the world after China.

Moreover, at the policy level, the US federal government still has strong support for the development of clean energy. Joseph Goffman, deputy assistant administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, told the author at the energy conference that he believed that the US Supreme Court was unlikely to eventually reject the Clean Power Plan, and that the US Congress had already passed a tax incentive package that would continue to extend the development of renewable energy at the end of last year. Tubman also said that the court had previously given the US Environmental Protection Agency the power to set national emission reduction targets. Even if the Clean Power Plan was overturned this time, given that the current targets were the result of scientific demonstration, the US Environmental Protection Agency's future new emission reduction targets would not be lower than the current requirements.