AUSTIN – Today the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for the American Future Rob Henneke, and TPPF’s Fueling Freedom Project Director Doug Domenech issued the following statements on the publication in the Federal Register of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) the Clean Power Plan:
“Now filed in the Federal Register, EPA’s lawless Clean Power Plan to re-order and re-engineer the nation’s entire electric system now carries the force of law unless overruled by the federal courts or repealed by new law,” said White. “Such a mandate of unprecedented national policy consequence must be clearly authorized by our elected representatives in Congress. If EPA’s preferred policy to supplant fossil fuels—on which our country is utterly dependent- prevails, our government no longer operates as a constitutional democracy.”
“Today the Federal Register published the long awaited final EPA carbon dioxide reduction rule to control emissions from the electricity sector in the states,” said Domenech. “This unneeded, ineffective rule is all pain for no gain. It will raise the electricity rates on all homes and businesses for no measurable improvement to the climate. As we learned from ERCOT’s analysis of the rule, the rule will result in the retirement of at least 4,000 megawatts of generation and a 16% increase of retail power prices. This rule is seriously flawed. It amounts to the imposition of a national energy tax and is a federal takeover of the electricity system. Middle class households and those on limited incomes will be hurt the most. States should work together to oppose this rule.”
"The publication of the Clean Power Plan continues the left's war on middle class families,” said Henneke. “The increase in home electricity bills will hurt Americans already struggling today. Furthermore, the EPA's acknowledgement that the CPP will have any meaningful impact on worldwide temperatures only adds insult to injury and calls into question the real intent behind this disastrous agenda."
Kathleen Hartnett White is a distinguished senior fellow-in-residence and the director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment. Former Chairman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2001-2007).
Rob Henneke is Director of the Center for the American Future. Henneke served as the twice-elected Kerr County Attorney and as Assistant Attorney General in the General Litigation division of the Texas Attorney General’s office.
The Honorable Doug Domenech is Director of the Fueling Freedom Project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Domenech most recently served as Secretary of Natural Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia and served as White House Liaison and deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.