Q: What is the Carbon Pollution Rule?

A: The environmental protection agency recently proposed that new coal fired power plants have to reduce their carbon pollution by anywhere from 40 to 60 percent. Carbon pollution is the major global warming or climate change pollutant. Under these rules new power plants would have to emit only 40 to 60 percent of the carbon pollution (00:24) that an existing plant is allowed to emit. This will reduce the growth in carbon pollution emissions in the United States. We also need limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants and we hope that once the EPA is done with this rule they'll propose reductions from existing power plants.

Q: Why is this rule important?

A: (00:45) Industrial carbon pollution has been linked to $60 billion worth of damage in the United States due to global warming that comes from carbon pollution. As the planet warms we're going to have increased smog, which will lead to more premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks. In addition, we’re going to see tropical diseases in the United States that were never here before. Finally, we are going to have extreme weather events like more severe storms, more drought, more floods, and all of those threaten human lives. We need to reduce carbon pollution from power plants in order to reduce the threat of these impacts of climate change.

Q: What are some of the benefits and costs of this rule

A: (01:31) EPA's proposed carbon pollution rule would only effect new proposed but unbuilt power plants. There are only about 20 power plants that are proposed that haven't been started that this would effect. It will increase the cost of building these coal-fired power plants because pollution controls will be fairly expensive. What this means is that some of these power plants may never be built or will be built will use natural gas instead. EPA's proposed carbon pollution rule would only effect new proposed but unbuilt power plants. What it will do is cut pollution from those plants in half, which will reduce our growth in carbon pollution which cause global warming. Global warming will have severe health and economic impacts in the United States, including more respiratory illnesses related to smog, dangave, and other tropical disease will (02:31) become more prominent, and extreme weather events will occur more frequently or with more ferocity like extreme floods, drought, and severe storms. By reducing the carbon pollution from new power plants it reduces our growth in carbon pollution thereby reducing the costs of all the impacts of climate change. To dramatically reduce the costs of climate change we need to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants as well as proposed power plants.

Another benefit of EPA's proposed carbon pollution rule is that it will level the playing field between dirty coal-fired power and new cleaner renewable resources such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy. This will spur more investments in wind and solar power, which will create more clean energy jobs. The proposed carbon pollution (03:32) rule will make renewable energy such as wind and solar more affordable relative to dirty coal-fired power. This will drive more investment in clean renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, which will then also create thousands of clean energy jobs. So, we will get a big economic boost in our clean tech sector by for the first time requiring carbon pollution reductions from new power plants. The benefits of EPA's proposed carbon pollution standard is that it will increase the attractiveness of investment in clean energy, create thousands of clean tech jobs, and reduce the health impacts and costs of global warming.