According to multiple sources, the Obama administration has proposed the most far-reaching climate change adaptation and mitigation measures ever put in place by a U.S. president. The plan includes everything from cutting power plant emissions to boosting the amount of wind and solar energy installations on public lands and buildings as the U.S looks to move into the future conscious of the effects of global warming.
The White House plan includes three main policy tracks. The first addresses emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2), from new and existing power plants. This version of the Climate Action plan would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions from more than 1,000 existing coal-fired power plants for the first time ever. The plan could also include natural gas power plants as well. Thanks largely to the global recession and the displacement of coal by natural gas in the power sector, the U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2012 may have been a lowest in a couple decades, but the first quarter of 2013 saw the percentage of electricity coming from coal start to go back up as natural gas prices increased, while U.S emissions rose by at least 4% during that time period.
The White House has indicated that without additional measures to reduce carbon emissions from the electricity sector, continued emissions decreases are unlikely to be achieved by market forces alone (i.e., natural gas prices). Their proposal to limit emissions at existing power plants could help drive a continued drop in overall U.S. emissions.
The White House has gone as far as recommitting the U.S. to meeting the greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals it established in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, when the administration agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That would be approximately double the reduction the U.S. has seen due to the recession, increase the use of cleaner-burning natural gas, and increase energy efficiency since 2007.
The second track helps prepare the U.S. for the effects of climate change that are already occurring and are likely to occur in the next several decades due to the long-lived nature of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. The climate action plan calls for the Department of Energy to make up to $8 billion in loan guarantees “for a wide array of advanced fossil energy projects,” including carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Such technologies, which have not yet been proven to work at the commercial scale, could allow utility companies to continue burning coal for generating electricity, while capturing and burying the related carbon emissions, thus removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Lastly, the policy proposals include provisions to work with the international community to address global warming, both from an emissions reduction and climate adaptation standpoint. The climate action plan commits the U.S. to working with international partners to reduce the emissions of not only carbon emissions, but also non-carbon based greenhouse gases such as HFCs. HFCs are used as a refrigerant and is a powerful short-lived climate warming agent. According to Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a phasedown of HFC emissions in the U.S. can deliver a quarter of the administration’s 2020 climate goal. According to a study being published on Wednesday, a global phaseout of HFC use during the early part of this century can avoid a half a degree Celsius in future warming by the end of the century.
The Climate Action Plan also addresses other emissions such as methane emissions by ordering the EPA and other government agencies to develop “a comprehensive, interagency methane strategy” that includes addressing methane emissions from natural gas plants.” As a Climate Central research report found, how much methane emissions are coming from natural gas pipelines and power plants is key to determining how much climate benefits that electricity source provides.
The Obama administration has also looked to increase efficiency in vehicles by enacting the toughest passenger vehicle fuel efficiency standards in U.S. history. It requires hat passenger vehicles have an average performance equivalent of 34.1 miles per gallon by 2016 and 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, which the White House claims will eliminate 6 billion metric tons of carbon pollution — more than the U.S. emits in an entire year.
Transportation emissions make up about 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and heavy-duty trucks comprise more than 20 percent of that total. Currently, heavy-duty trucks, which are primarily transport trucks, have an average fuel economy of only 5 miles per gallon, so improving their fuel economy could help significantly lower emissions from the transportation sector. The administration has worked to enact post-2018 fuel economy standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and vans, by working with the auto industry.
Sources:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/president27sclimateactionplan.pdf
http://www.usclimatenetwork.org/policy/presidents-climate-action-plan
http://www.c2es.org/federal/obama-climate-plan-resources