AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) submitted comments in opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan rule. Under the proposed rule, states are required to regulate in conformity with EPA’s dictates on a range of matters that lie entirely outside EPA’s statutory authority, including the regulation of their electrical grids and the energy mix of their power stations. The proposed rule forces Texas to choose between relegating its energy and electrical policy to EPA’s control, or accepting the forced shutdown of a large fraction of their electrical generating capacity, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the health and safety of ordinary Texans.
The proposed rule would require a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the electrical sector by 2030. Texas would be burdened far more than any other state, and compliance with the Clean Power Plan mandates would require extensive changes in Texas law, including a re-regulation of Texas’ competitive electrical market.
“The states are forced to comply with EPA dictates whether they elect a State Plan or a Federal Plan,” said Mario Loyola, Senior Fellow at TPPF. “Their choice ultimately boils down to either accepting a catastrophic loss of electricity supply or transforming their electricity sector in the ways envisioned by EPA, a transformation which, under EPA’s interpretation of its own power, it would not be able to impose upon the states. EPA has gone from coercing the states by threatening their key industries, to coercing them by threatening their weakest and most vulnerable residents with forced blackouts.”
“A report this week showed that Texas’ competitive electricity market has enough generation to keep the lights on through at least 2022,” said Bill Peacock, Vice President of Research and Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at TPPF. “EPA’s poorly named Clean Power Plan won’t do anything to clean the environment or provide power for Texas; in fact, it would force us to abandon America’s most successful, competitive electricity market at a cost to consumers of billions of dollars a year.”
“EPA’s Clean Power Plan is doubly ultra vires—beyond the powers granted in federal and state law,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Distinguished Senior Fellow-In-Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment at TPPF. “It is difficult to imagine how the federal courts could uphold this vast expansion of EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. TPPF’s comments articulate the constitutional implications of EPA’s lawless assault on state authority guaranteed under the 10the Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
To read the full comments click here: http://txpo.li/1Gcf9Ci
Bill Peacock is Vice President of Research and Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute of New York University School of Law in fall 2013 and fall 2014.
Kathleen Hartnett White is a Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and the Director at the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment. Former Chairman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2001-2007).
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.