President Barack Obama will release on Monday a final version of the Clean Power Plan in what he calls the nation’s most important step to combat climate change.
The administration has been working with states and power companies to ensure they have the flexibility needed to cut pollution while lowering energy bills, Obama said in a video released in a White House Twitter post.
The first U.S. rules to curb greenhouse gases from power plants are the centerpiece of Obama’s fight to combat climate change, an issue he’s made a priority of his final two years in the White House. The regulations are among the most sweeping and complex in the Environmental Protection Agency’s history and they promise to revamp the way electricity has been generated and distributed for a century.
“Power plants are the single biggest source of the harmful carbon pollution that contributes to climate change,” said Obama. “Until now, there have been no federal limits to the amount of that pollution those plants can dump into the air.”
The White House has said that the final plan will be tougher than what was proposed in 2014, and will have new provisions to boost solar, wind and other renewable energy. The president would veto any bill aimed at stopping the plan that would cut carbon emissions, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said July 29.
Power plants burning coal produce almost 40 percent of the nation’s electricity, and release the most carbon dioxide for every kilowatt generated.
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