Release date:
4/27/2018
(RALEIGH) Attorney General Josh Stein today filed comments opposing the Trump administration’s “unlawful and unsupported” proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the first nationwide emission limits on existing fossil fuel-burning power plants.
“The Clean Power Plan makes us safer and healthier,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “Investing in clean energy creates jobs, makes us more secure from Middle East terrorism, and combats climate change.”Attorney General Stein is joined in this action by the attorneys general of New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, the District of Columbia, as well as the chief legal officers of the cities of Boulder, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, South Miami, and Broward County.
In their comments, the coalition compares the constrained vision of “the nation’s most protective environmental statute” – the Clean Air Act – newly adopted by the Trump EPA to “a horse with blinders (if not a blindfold)” that “completely ignores the dire threat climate change poses, the interconnected nature of power plants, and the nature of the pollutant (carbon dioxide) that is the subject of regulation.” The Clean Power Plan is the culmination of a decade-long effort by partnering states and cities to require mandatory cuts in the emissions of climate change pollution from fossil fuel-burning power plants under the Clean Air Act.
The Clean Power Plan, along with the companion rule applicable to new, modified, and reconstructed power plants, will control these emissions by setting limits on the amount of climate change pollution that power plants can emit. The Clean Power Plan is expected to eliminate as much climate change pollution as is emitted by more than 160 million cars a year – or 70 percent of the nation’s passenger cars.
Contact:
Laura Brewer (919) 716-6484
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