In early June, President Barack Obama’s administration and the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a sweeping new plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants nationwide, in an effort to reduce overall carbon pollution and slow global climate change. Assuming the final rules resemble the EPA’s proposed rules after anticipated legal challenges, the plan will cause dramatic shifts in the energy industry and hasten the existing trend toward choosing natural gas as the feedstock for power plants. Here are several items Texas lawyers should consider when preparing to counsel clients on the potentially far-reaching implications of the Clean Power Plan.
The EPA’s plan works by capitalizing on four measures the EPA has identified as the most common ways states already have adopted to pursue the goal of reducing carbon pollution: 1. making fossil fuel power plants run more efficiently; 2. increasing the use of low-emitting power sources, including natural gas; 3. using more zero- and low-emitting power sources; and 4. reducing demand on power plants by using electricity more efficiently at the end user, for example by insulating buildings better.
