Clean Power Plan

The Clean Power Plan was an Obama administration policy aimed at combating climate change that was first proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2014.^[1] The final version of the plan was unveiled by President Barack Obama on August 3, 2015.^[2] Each state was assigned a target for reducing carbon emissions within its borders, which could be accomplished how the states saw fit, but with the possibility of the EPA stepping in if a state refused to submit a plan.^[3] If every state met its target, the plan was projected to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation by 32 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2030, and would have reduced other harmful air pollution as well.^[4]

In March 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating that the EPA review the plan.^[5][6][7] In June 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, and on October 9, Trump-appointed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced the formal process to repeal the Clean Power Plan would begin on October 10, 2017.^[8]

In May 2019, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced plans to change the way the EPA calculates health risks of air pollution, saying the change was intended to rectify inconsistencies in the current cost-benefit analyses used by the agency. This became the Affordable Clean Energy rule.^[9] On June 19, 2019, the EPA issued the final Affordable Clean Energy rule (ACE), which replaced the Clean Power Plan. On January 19, 2021, the last full day of the Trump administration, the D.C. Circuit vacated the Affordable Clean Energy rule and remanded to the EPA for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. The court characterized the ACE as a "fundamental misconstruction" of environmental laws. The ruling did not reinstate the Clean Power Plan; however, it did create the opportunity for the Biden administration to improve and clarify the rules.^[10][11]

In 2022, in the case West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court curbed the EPA's ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants as was done in the Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan was no longer in place, but if it had been, the ruling would have struck it down.^[12]

In 2024, the Biden Administration issued a suite of rules called the Greenhouse Gas Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants, sometimes called the "Clean Power Plan 2.0", to replace the Clean Power Plan and ACE.^[13]