Trump EPA Replaces Clean Power Plan With Weaker Rule Its Own Analysis Concedes Could Cause Up To 1,400 Additional Deaths A Year, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Coal Plants Faced A Federal Carbon Limit

WASHINGTON. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized the Affordable Clean Energy rule, formally repealing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and replacing it with a measure that asks the nation's coal-fired power plants to consider operating slightly more efficiently, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that the federal government had been acknowledging power-plant carbon emissions as something it was obligated to limit.

The Clean Power Plan, which was never implemented after being stayed by the Supreme Court, would have required the electricity sector to cut carbon dioxide emissions roughly 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The Affordable Clean Energy rule sets no national target, identifies no required reduction, and instead directs individual states to evaluate "heat rate improvements," a category of incremental efficiency upgrades, at coal plants they remain free to regulate however they wish. Officials described the new approach as returning authority to the states, the level of government least equipped to regulate an atmosphere that does not observe state lines.

In its own regulatory impact analysis, the EPA projected that the rule could result in as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths per year by 2030, compared with the plan it replaced, a figure the agency presented in a table alongside the rule's estimated compliance savings. A senior official familiar with the analysis said the projection had been included for the sake of completeness and was not expected to affect anyone's enthusiasm for the rule.

The agency further acknowledged that making a coal plant more efficient can lower the cost of running it, which can cause the plant to run more often and emit more pollution overall, an outcome the rule's supporters characterized as a feature of a healthy energy market rather than a contradiction of the rule's stated purpose. "We have ended the war on American energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal," the President had told Congress, referring to a fuel he has repeatedly described as clean.

The rule was finalized under EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who came to the agency after years lobbying on behalf of coal interests, a background officials said gave him valuable familiarity with the industry's priorities. Several of those priorities had previously been delivered to the administration in the form of a written action plan from the coal company Murray Energy, whose chief executive had been a prominent supporter of the President. Administration sources said the overlap between the wishlist and federal policy reflected nothing more than a shared commitment to coal.

At press time, EPA officials confirmed the rule would remain in effect until a federal appeals court vacated it nineteen months later for misreading the Clean Air Act, at which point the agency would be free to begin the entire process again.