Austin, TX – Life:Powered applauds the Environmental Protection Agency for its proposal to cease regulating CO2 emissions from existing power plants. The proposed rule concludes that U.S. power plant emissions do not significantly contribute to global climate change and cannot be regulated under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act.
“For nearly a decade, Life:Powered and the Center for the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation have staked the position that the Clean Air Act does not allow the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants,” said Brent Bennett, Ph.D., Policy Director for Life:Powered. “We are grateful that the EPA is now adopting this position, and we hope that the agency will adopt in its final rule the scientifically and legally robust arguments that our team has developed to support this position.”
A More Precise Scientific Framework
The proposed rule bases the determination of non-significance on the finding that U.S. emissions are negligible compared to global emissions totals. However, it is challenging to set a threshold of significance based on this framework. Because greenhouse gases are not directly harmful to humans, there is no set level of emissions or concentrations that will definitively cause harm that must be mitigated through regulations.
“Looking at U.S. emissions as a percentage of global emissions, while informative, misses the fundamental legal and scientific question,” Bennett emphasized. “The Clean Air Act requires that emissions ‘contribute significantly’ to endangerment of public health. Since the health effect of CO2 is not direct but occurs through its effect on global climate, the proper measure is whether those emissions cause a measurable change in global temperature.”
Life:Powered’s research demonstrates that the U.S. CO2 emissions definitively do not meet that threshold. The measurement error in global surface temperature data is ±0.1°C, and U.S. power plant CO2 emissions will increase global temperatures by only 0.015°C by 2050. U.S. CO2 emissions across all sectors would cause only a 0.052°C temperature increase by 2050. Therefore, the impact of those emissions falls well below the underlying uncertainty range in the data, rendering them legally insignificant under Clean Air Act requirements.
Recommendation for Strengthening the Final Rule
The EPA’s proposed rule represents an important return toward science-based environmental policy that meets the needs of all Americans rather than serving an anti-impact ideology that argues all emissions must be regulated regardless of the costs.
Life:Powered believes that incorporating temperature-impact analysis into the final rule would strengthen its scientific foundation, enhance its resilience to legal challenges, and ultimately provide the regulatory certainty necessary for renewed investment in reliable power generation infrastructure.