In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, pending judicial review, the gap between the nation’s international climate pledge and what the United States can actually achieve has widened further, according to a blog post Wednesday by Stephen Eule of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Achieving even half of the goal rests in large part on EPA‘s Clean Power Plan final rule, which the administration itself touts as the centerpiece of the president’s pledge,” Eule wrote.
The group explained that, according to its analysis, the administration’s current climate actions, including the Clean Power Plan, would deliver only 45-49 percent of the nation’s goal under the new global climate agreement. Under the Paris Agreement, struck in December during the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.S. has committed to cutting its net greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels.
Without the Clean Power plan, the chamber estimated “that the shortfall would expand from the current range of 45 [percent] to 49 [percent] to a range of 60% to 63%—that’s more of a chasm than a gap,” the blog says. The group produced these numbers by comparing the emissions reduction that administration’s current climate actions would produce with the climate agreement goal.
