Chamber of Commerce releases critical Clean Power Plan analysis

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy recently released a new analysis, titled “What’s in a Target,” of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan (CPP), which criticizes the regulation’s subjectivity and fairness.

“EPA’s power plant regulations are flawed at their very core,” Institute for 21st Century Energy President and CEO Karen Harbert said. “Our analysis reveals how the EPA relied on tactics buried deep in the rule’s complex regulatory formulas to make the rule at least 28 percent more stringent, which will increase compliance costs on states, utilities, and consumers by billions of dollars.”

As one example, the report highlights how the EPA’s use of 2012, which saw higher-than-usual wind energy instalments due to an expiring production tax credit, as the basis for its wind energy figures that caused an increase in the CPP’s stringency.

“EPA’s treatment of wind power illustrates how a single faulty assumption can increase compliance costs by billions of dollars,” Institute for 21st Century Energy Senior Director of Policy Dan Byers said. “The regulatory basis of the CPP has almost nothing to do with the operation of coal and natural gas plants, and it is disingenuous for EPA to suggest otherwise. This report quantifies the role of highly questionable renewable energy generation assumptions as a central driver of the rule’s stringency.”