President Obama’s Clean Power Plan could prove as important as anything else he has done or will do in the White House. Ohioans have much to gain from the plan, if we reject the predictable — and unfounded — fear-mongering by fossil-fuel polluters and their political cronies.
Instead, we need to embrace the plan’s vital environmental and economic benefits to Ohio, which offer the prospect of exceeding its costs: improved public health, job creation in a diversified economy, lower energy bills from a modernized power grid, and fewer extreme weather events here.
The plan’s final rules, released last week, aim to combat human-made climate change. They seek to reduce this country’s emissions of carbon dioxide from electric power plants by 32 percent no later than 2030, down from 2005 levels.
That goal is tough, but doable and necessary. Power plants, largely coal-fired, account for about one-third of the nation’s greenhouse-gas pollution. These emissions are dwindling as fuels cleaner than coal become more popular — but not fast enough.
Climate scientists say that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity, traps heat in the atmosphere that contributes dangerously to global warming. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates the Clean Power Plan will achieve the equivalent of taking 166 million cars off the road.
The President’s plan tasks Ohio, the fifth-worst carbon polluter among the states, with a 28 percent reduction in power plant emissions from 2012 levels by 2030. Our state, and every other state that acts in good faith, will have ample flexibility and incentives to figure out how to follow the rules.
The initiative will place this country in a better position to advocate tough global measures to address climate change — the biggest threat to this planet — when the United Nations convenes a summit on the issue this December in Paris. The United States trails only China in its volume of carbon emissions.
Closer to home, the plan can play to Ohio’s strengths in generating more energy from both natural gas and carbon-free options such as wind and solar power. It can curb our over-reliance on dirty coal, which still provides nearly 70 percent of our state’s electricity. It can promote such technologies as factories generating electricity and heat from a single fuel source.
The plan proposes four basic ways in which states can meet their anti-pollution targets: substitute natural gas for coal to generate power, boost production of alternative energy, reduce consumption through greater energy efficiency, and work with other states to create regional programs that will allow companies to trade carbon pollution credits — a market-based solution to emissions reduction.
Revisit energy standards
Ohio’s boom in natural gas production using hydraulic fracturing gives it a leg up on the first option. But to meet the next two, Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled General Assembly will have to reverse the disastrous decision they made last year to pause Ohio’s successful clean-energy and energy-efficiency standards.
Ohio was the first state to take such a big step backward. That bad choice has cost the state jobs and economic growth.
Jason Slattery, director of solar for Gem Energy, part of the Walbridge-based construction company Rudolph Libbe, notes that — contrary to the assertion of politicians who rolled back the energy standards — the cost of renewable energy has fallen by half in the past five years, reducing the need for public subsidies.
“The price point is competitive with any other form of energy out there,” Mr. Slattery told me. “We’re still developing and installing solar arrays, because our customers want renewables.
“But while Michigan and Indiana are promoting renewables, Ohio has become the hole in the renewable basket,” he said. “Manufacturers are leaving.”
If it’s allowed to work here, the Clean Power Plan will benefit Ohio in other ways. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that the plan will create nearly 100,000 construction jobs and more than 6,000 permanent jobs in Ohio in renewable-power industries.
Those permanent jobs would pay $330 million a year in wages and benefits. Renewable energy generated in Ohio could power 40 percent of the state’s electricity by 2030, the department estimates.
Before the state froze its energy standards, Ohio attracted nearly $4 billion in investments in renewable power. Despite the rollback, Ohio’s clean-energy industries still provide more than 30,000 jobs. Energy efficiency upgrades have saved Ohioans $1 billion on their electric bills.
Yet powerful fossil-fuel and utility lobbies and political leaders, in Ohio and elsewhere, already are opposing the President’s plan. They resolve to challenge it in the courts, Congress, and state legislatures.
They call the plan a power grab by President Obama that tramples on states’ rights, exceeds his authority under federal law, and threatens vital institutions. They say it will obstruct growth and competitiveness, killing jobs and inflating consumer prices.
Better alternative?
If these assertions sound familiar, they should — they’re straight out of the anti-Obamacare playbook. They would be more credible if the political and special interests that recite them offered a better, cheaper, simpler alternative to the Clean Power Plan. They don’t.
Governor Kasich, campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, vows to resist the plan rather than meet its deadlines for showing how Ohio will comply with it, and then doing so. That makes no sense: States that don’t develop their own programs will watch the U.S. EPA do it for them.
You’d hope that Mr. Kasich, who showed good sense in expanding Ohio’s Medicaid program under Obamacare, will display similar pragmatism here. But such leadership seems incompatible with Republican campaign rhetoric.
The Clean Power Plan can’t be the nation’s only response to climate change. Transportation, industries other than those directly engaged in power generation, farms, businesses, and homes account for two-thirds of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The Obama Administration has taken useful steps to curb pollution from these sectors by, for example, working with domestic and international automakers to improve fuel efficiency for cars and trucks. The focus on power plants is the logical next step.
The plan isn’t perfect. Natural gas is cleaner than coal, but it’s still a fossil fuel. Global warming won’t be conquered by 2030; the job will only get harder. And the plan comes just 18 months before the end of Mr. Obama’s presidency; his successor, especially a Republican, could promptly scrap it.
Are there other, perhaps better ways of achieving what the President wants to do? Sure: Congress could enact a carbon tax that would be rebated to consumers, or develop a nationwide cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon pollution. But these things won’t happen as long as Congress is led by politicians who won’t acknowledge the reality of human-made climate change, or see any benefit to their own careers in dealing with it.
The Clean Power Plan is the biggest step President Obama, or any of his predecessors, has taken to combat global warming. It sets a critical example of leadership for other countries.
We need to make the plan work, for Ohio’s sake and the world’s. It is, quite literally, a matter of survival.
David Kushma is editor of The Blade. Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com or on Twitter @dkushma1
First Published August 9, 2015, 4:00 a.m.