What the world should know about the US INDC
On Tuesday November 17th, the Senate voted for two resolutions “to kill the Clean Power Plan”. The vote passed 52–46, in favor of blocking the EPA’s strategy for regulating carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants via the Clean Air Act. Although President Obama will surely veto this vote, the Senate, and later the House, passed these statements in an attempt to send a message to the world that the federal legislature is not on board with president Obama’s pledges at the conference in Paris. However, foreign governments should not be scared of the US government’s commitment to climate change. The components of the US’s INDC are protected from Congressional change. Each part of the INDC falls under old legislation that has almost no chance of being repealed. Even further, the US Supreme Court ruled in Mass v. EPA in 2007 that the EPA was required to determine if carbon dioxide was a danger to human health; if the EPA found carbon dioxide was a danger, they would be required to regulate its emissions. In 2009, the EPA published the Endangerment Finding, which found that greenhouse gases threaten public health. President Obama can confidently make the pledges in the INDC as long as Congress doesn’t repeal the Clean Air Act, which is unlikely.
Components of the INDC
The components of the US’s INDC are the Clean Power Plan, current Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles and future ones as well, Significant New Alternatives Policy program (SNAP) , New Source Performance Standards for the oil and natural gas industry (NSPS), and building sector conservation standards . The items in this list fall under the Clean Air Act, the Energy Policy Act or the Energy Independence Security Act. In total, these pledges (shown below) add up to 26–28% reductions below 2005 by 2025, no small potatoes for one of the world’s largest emitters.
One Component: The Clean Power Plan
Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units, better known as the Clean Power Plan, that Congress naively voted to remove last week, is the most recent part of the INDC — and a major component of promised emissions reductions. This EPA regulation published in August 2015 sets a cap on each state’s carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants. The caps are determined on a state-by-state basis taking into account the capability of each state to integrate the three building blocks (heat rate improvements at existing coal plants, re-dispatch from coal and other steam generation to underutilized existing Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) units, and renewable energy deployment). Together, these caps will contribute to a 30% decrease in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 from the electricity generation sector. States are required to make their own plan for reaching these goals. State plans can use any methods of compliance, and the EPA is expecting to see market-based trading programs to arise.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of the world perceives Congress’s actions to show disapproval of the Clean Power Plan. The administration’s position has changed significantly since negotiations in Kyoto and Copenhagen, and Congress’ opinion matters only if the US needs to ratify a legally-binding agreement.
