Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

The Flawed Analysis Behind the Proposed Repeal of the Clean Power Plan

Renewable Energy World: The Trump Administration’s proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP) is based on flawed analysis that understates its benefits. This action is part of this administration’s unfortunate pattern of dismantling sensible policies and rejecting the underlying science of climate change. Repealing the CPP would remove another federal protection meant to help Americans avoid damages from a changing climate.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeks to justify the proposed repeal with a new Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) that assesses the benefits and costs of the Clean Power Plan. A comparison of the new analysis with the original analysis issued in 2015 under the Obama administration shows the Trump EPA has abandoned mainstream economics in how it estimates the benefits of avoiding climate change. The new cost estimates of those benefits are a fraction of those in the original analysis, as shown in the table below.

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