Analysis Shows Trump EPA Power Plant Rule Repeal Is a Killer
The EPA under President Trump has proposed to repeal all carbon pollution limits on power plants, a move that will lead to billions of dollars worth of health care costs and thousands of American deaths. The post Analysis Shows Trump EPA Power Plant Rule Repeal Is a Killer appeared first on Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE).
Last week, President Trump’s EPA proposed to repeal all carbon pollution limits from power plants, the latest step in the administration’s Polluter First Agenda to decimate the EPA and rules protecting Americans from polluters.
This is obviously a reckless and careless move, but according to the Trump administration’s own analysis, it will cause thousands of Americans to die, and saddle us with billions of dollars worth of costs each year for healthcare and premature deaths caused by people’s exposure to more nasty pollution.
In proposing this move, the EPA provides an analysis of costs and benefits, known as a regulatory impact analysis (RIA). A review of the RIA for the proposal to repeal the rules limiting climate pollution from power plants reveals that Americans would be harmed far more than they would benefit.
Americans Will Die Prematurely
The repeal will kill hundreds of Americans per year due to increased exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone pollution from power plant smokestacks. EPA calculated how many people in 2028, 2030, 2035, 2040, and 2045 would die prematurely from this exposure due to the environmental protections being repealed, shown below in Table 4-1 of the RIA. The table presents results from multiple calculation methods, making it a bit difficult to follow. However, one notable finding is that from 2028 to 2045 (with the exception of 2040), hundreds of premature deaths would be caused annually by repealing the environmental protections.
Americans Will Be Saddled With Billions of Dollars Per Year In Health Costs
The proposal saddles Americans with billions of dollars worth of costs each year for health care and premature deaths caused by people’s exposure to the nasty pollution that will be caused by repealing the regulations. These annual costs are shown in Table 4-3 in the RIA, displayed below. Note that 2026 and 2027 don’t show any costs because calculations weren’t made for those years.
Altogether, these health costs imposed on American households amount to $76-130 billion over the 2026-2047 period, as shown in Table 4-4.
Repealing the Rules Is a Job Killer
The repeal proposal will kill hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of job-years for construction workers in the energy sector due to the cancellation of all the clean energy projects that won’t be built. This is shown in Table 5-4 by the negative numbers indicating fewer construction-related job-years.
The loss of construction job-years is only very slightly offset by a gain in non-construction job-years (i.e., recurring operating, maintenance, and fuel extraction jobs).
Electric Bills Increase Through 2031
The potential benefit touted by backers of repealing the power plant climate pollution rules is that there will be money savings when energy companies no longer have to comply with the rules. If you ignore the massive health and mortality costs caused by repeal, the EPA analysis technically does show those savings to be there, but the fine print is important. While over a period of two decades, from 2026-2047, the RIA finds there to be $10-19 billion in compliance cost savings, it also shows that electricity costs would actually increase for consumers until 2032, as shown in Table 3-7 (highlighting added).
The Costs Outweigh The Benefits By 7-8 Times
Comparing the increased health costs imposed on Americans as a whole against energy companies’ financial savings from not having to comply with the pollution limits reveals that the costs vastly outweigh the benefits. The RIA shows that over the 20-year period of 2026-2047, the repeal’s health costs of $76-$130 billion outweigh the compliance cost benefits of $9.6-$19 billion by $67-$110 billion. In other words, the costs that the Trump administration would impose on the public by repealing the pollution rules outweigh the benefits by 7-8 times, as shown below in Table 6-2 (highlighting added).
This lopsided cost-benefit ratio actually understates how bad a value the Trump EPA’s repeal proposal is for the American public because President Trump instructed federal agencies to stop considering the value of climate benefits in analyses like this. EPA says in this RIA that due to President Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, “the EPA did not monetize benefits associated with CO2 emissions changes.” However, before the EPA was instructed to put its head in the sand, a previous EPA analysis released last year demonstrated that the power plant climate pollution limits would provide $160-470 billion in climate benefits globally over 20 years.
Speak Up Against This Reckless Proposal
Before the Trump administration finalizes this proposal, it must take public comments, and the comment period is now open until August 7.
Will you please take a minute to submit your comment today? Groups around the country are working hard to ensure hundreds of thousands of people submit comments and make sure that the Trump administration sees major public opposition to this misguided proposal.
Will you please add your name along with people from across the country, telling the Trump administration to protect the health and well-being of all Americans over fossil fuel corporate profits.
Our form here makes it easy to submit your comment, and you can edit your message to say whatever you like.
The post Analysis Shows Trump EPA Power Plant Rule Repeal Is a Killer appeared first on Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE).
What's Your Reaction?
