Don't Like the Clean Power Plan? Try Cap-and-Trade

If enough states "just say no" to the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, refusing to impose limits on the carbon dioxide emissions of electric utilities within their borders, that could hasten the emergence of an interstate cap-and-trade regime designed by the federal government.

This approach is spelled out in a proposed federal implementation plan published by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday, alongside the final regulations that for the first time govern carbon pollution from power plants that burn fossil fuels.

In the proposal, the agency outlines a model interstate emissions trading scheme that the states could adopt, or that the federal government would impose on any state that does not set up a compliance plan.

That sends a powerful signal that even if recalcitrant states refused to comply with the regulations, electricity producers would still be required to steeply cut emissions, the leading source of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

The EPA proposed that states use several tools—burning coal more efficiently, replacing it with natural gas or renewable energy, encouraging conservation of electricity and so on—based on "a reasonable assumption that all of those things can actually happen," the agency said in documents released on Monday.  "In the federal plan proposed in this action, the agency is ensuring that these things will happen."

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