Environment and Public Works Committee Republicans support Clean Power Plan repeal

The Republican members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) recently sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt expressing their support of the repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

“When President Obama finalized the CPP in 2015, we opposed it because of the pervasive, negative effects it would have had on Americans across the country,” the letter said. “The CPP would have driven up energy prices, eliminated American jobs, and hurt local communities that depend on coal. As the figures in your proposed repeal demonstrate, the costs of the CPP would have been substantial. By repealing the rule, EPA eliminates up to $33 billion in costs in the year 2030 alone.”

The letter also said that the CPP is unlawful as it involves an overreach of the EPA’s authority.

“Not only is the CPP bad policy, it is unlawful,” the letter said. “Congress did not give EPA the authority to transform our energy sector.”

On Oct. 10, 2017, the EPA published a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan rule. On March 28, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that directed the EPA and the Department of the Interior to review and, if appropriate, suspend, revise or rescind regulations impacting the natural gas, coal, oil, nuclear and electric generation sectors.

“The prior administration employed accounting policies that generated outsized benefits and minimized costs to justify costly OAR rules, such as the CPP,” the letter said. “As you have done in this proposal to repeal the CPP, EPA should continue to examine and correct those issues so that future policies are grounded on sound cost-benefit analyses.”