A few weeks ago Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP) 2.0 established under Biden, which aims to close coal-fired and new natural gas power plants unless they capture 90 percent of their carbon emissions. On top of technological deficiencies, the provision’s legality is questionable, and it will have dire consequences if left untouched.
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)—the idea that CO2 can be captured, transported, and then stored in underground wells—remains extremely complex, expensive, and largely unsuccessful despite decades of research and development. Only a handful of functioning CCS facilities operate worldwide, and they only capture approximately 0.1 percent of global emissions, a tiny fraction of what experts had projected.
The Supreme Court in 2022 struck down President Obama’s Clean Power Plan 1.0 in West Virginia v. EPA, which according to the current EPA “the major questions doctrine barred EPA from misusing the Clean Air Act to manipulate Americans’ energy choices and shift the balance of the nation’s electrical fuel mix.” Such sweeping powers to overhaul how the nation generates electricity is not granted by agencies; it must be done through Congress, which as of yet, has not been successfully accomplished.
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Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.