Biden's plan to cut power plant pollution could seriously affect you

In May 2023, President Joe Biden announced a plan to cut carbon emissions coming from American power planets and imposed new limits that had the potential to affected tens of millions of Americans, here how.

In April 2023, White House officials reviewed the final plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants in a scheme to decarbonize the industry by 2035. 

According to Reuters, Biden’s new emission regulations were more than a year in the making and aimed to indirectly reduce pollution through the use of carbon capture and storage technology. 

The scheme wasn't as simple as it sounds, though. The new regulations wouldn’t mandate the use of carbon capture and storage equipment according to the New York Times, but rather compel its use. 

Biden was planning to set up a series of caps on pollution rates that power plants would need to meet in order to be within the new regulations, the New York Times noted based on information they gathered from sources close to the plans. 

However, the problem with Biden’s plan was that it would essentially require the majority of American power plants to directly adopt carbon capture storage systems or other technologies to offset their pollution rates. 

“To meet the requirements at existing facilities, many plant owners would be compelled to add carbon-capture systems or substitute hydrogen for some of their fuel,” wrote Bloomberg’s Jennifer Dlouhy, adding that “closures also could help satisfy the limits.”

The New York Times pointed out that only 20 of America’s 3400 coal and gas-fired power plants used any technology to limit their greenhouse gas emissions at the time of their article's publication. 

News of new regulations in the power industry came just days after Biden signed an executive order aimed at revitalizing the nation's commitment to environmental justice. 

“We have to commit ourselves to action,” President Biden said during the April 21st announcement of his new executive order on combating global climate change. 

“Will we preserve our planet for future generations? History is going to judge us by how we answer these questions,” Biden added before explaining how he’d make an impact.   

If the President was hoping to make a splash with his new regulations on American power plants then he certainly hit the mark. The New York Times noted that no federal government had ever attempted to regulate the pollution produced by power plants. 

The benefits of the new pollution regulations will be the further adoption of technologies that really do have the ability to help reshape our world and solve the current climate crisis.

"These standards could level the playing field between new gas plants and new renewable energy," said Thomas Schuster, head of the Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter, according to Reuters.  

Unfortunately, it was unknown how the new regulations would affect end consumers, and as with many of Biden’s other climate plans, this one was likely to face major hurdles in Congress.

“It is likely to draw an immediate legal challenge from a group of Republican attorneys general that have already sued the Biden administration to stop other climate policies,” wrote New York Times journalists Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was expected to release Biden’s planned emission regulations soon after news hit that the White House was reviewing the final changes to the legislation and on May 11th the EPA released the details of the new climate rules.  

"Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new carbon pollution standards for coal and natural gas-fired power plants that will protect public health, reduce harmful pollutants, and deliver up to $85 billion in climate and public health benefits over the next two decades," an EPA press release noted, which added that 60 days would be given for comment.