Power Plant Rules Could Unite States on Climate Action

If it survives court challenges, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan will force state administrations to impose regulations or take other approved steps to reduce climate pollution from power plants by nearly a third in 2030, compared with 2005 levels.  That could involve switching away from coal, for example, or replacing the facilities with solar and wind farms.

Even states that are suing to block the Clean Power Plan are preparing plans to comply with it. More often than not, those preparations are considering the potential of multi-state alliances. 

Months before the rule is due to be finalized, four sets of regional talks — collectively involving at least 41 states in one form or another — have begun to explore interstate collaborations. Some discussions have already yielded informal decisions.  Some have been limited to workshops where multi-state approaches have been explained and discussed.  And in one set of talks, some states participated only as observors or asked to be included in the future.

“We’re seeing those discussions happen organically,” Jackson Morris, a Natural Resources Defense Council official involved with some of the talks, said.  “What we’re going to see in the coming months, especially as the final rule comes out in the summer, is that hopefully those states begin to engage in even more in-depth discussions.”
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Robert Stavins, a Harvard University professor who directs the school’s environmental economics program, and other experts point out, though, that interstate collaboration would be possible even if states aren’t interested in cap-and-trade programs.  “Multistate compliance plans definitely do not require cap-and-trade, or any other specific instrument,” Stavins said.

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