CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The latest version of the Obama administration’s plan to fight climate change won’t work as promised and instead will drive up electricity rates and cost jobs, Wyoming’s governor and congressional delegation said Monday.
Wyoming - the nation’s top-producing coal state - would need to cut carbon dioxide emissions about 37 percent from 2012 levels by 2030, or from about 50 million to 31.6 million short tons per year under the plan by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead vowed to keep fighting regulations that are “fundamentally bad for Wyoming” and that he said exceed the federal government’s regulatory authority.
“The Clean Power Plan is scientifically flawed and if implemented will not achieve minimum reductions,” Mead, a Republican, said in a release. “It is in fact damaging - not just to Wyoming, but the nation.”
Sen. John Barrasso and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, also Republicans, joined the criticism of the plan that Obama administration officials praised as the single biggest step the U.S. could take to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Nationwide, the plan seeks to achieve a 32 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030. That’s up from a 30 percent goal announced last year over the same period.
Mandatory reductions would begin in 2022 and continue gradually over the next eight years.
Wyoming has much at stake with climate-change regulation. The state supplies about 40 percent of the nation’s coal, more than any other state by far, and coal-fired power plants are a major source of carbon dioxide emissions.
The plan would cause demand for Wyoming coal to slacken in the U.S. while the state itself would have to burn less of the stuff to meet its targets.
Meanwhile, Wyoming exports nearly two-thirds of the electricity produced within its borders to other states. Burning coal supplies close to 90 percent of that power.
Critics say Wyoming would have to do more than many other states to meet the EPA rules, despite its relatively small population and electricity use.
“This rule will face significant challenges in court and states are right to reject it,” Barrasso said in a release. “The president, in full legacy-seeking mode, is choosing again to go around Congress and the American people.”
The plan ultimately will have a barely discernable effect on global temperatures and sea levels, and it’s reckless for the government to go ahead with it, Lummis said in a release.
“We can’t take for granted the communities and families in coal country who produce the stable electrical supply that is crucial to our way of life and our aspirations for national prosperity. But that is exactly what the EPA is doing today,” she said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.