AUSTIN –Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment Kathleen Hartnett White and Fueling Freedom Project Director Doug Domenech issued the following statements on Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Chairman Dr. Bryan Shaw’s testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Environment Subcommittee hearing on State Perspectives: How EPA’s Power Plan Will Shut Down Power Plants:
“As a former Chairman of TCEQ, I applaud Chairman Shaw’s testimony identifying the futility, incoherence, and implausibility of EPA’s carbon rule known as the Clean Power Plan,” said White. “As his testimony clearly points out, it is appalling that EPA aims to justify this unprecedented arrogation of federal power to re-engineer the nation’s system of electric power because it would help the President seal a binding global agreement on climate change at the UN’s climate summit in Paris. Dismembering the marvel that is our intricate, well-functioning electric system is far beyond the regulatory authority to protect air quality that the U.S. Congress delegated to EPA.”
“We applaud Chairman Shaw’s strong and principled stand for sound science and the citizens of Texas,” said Domenech. “He is correct that this EPA rule lacks a legal and scientific basis, and in the end is ‘all pain for no gain.’ In fact, EPA’s method for determining the ‘Best System of Emission Reduction’ in the rule marks a radical departure from historical practice, and the plain language of the Clean Air Act.
“EPA is setting standards for existing power plants based on the method of electric generation they prefer, not on the control technology or methods that can be feasibly applied to existing sources. The rule does not provide a single quantifiable climate benefit, and EPA is deceiving the American public by ‘wildly inflating’ the economic benefits of the rule. Many of the claimed health benefits from the rule are actually ‘co-benefits’ from reductions of non-greenhouse gas pollutants already regulated under other rules.”
The Clean Power Plan will require Texas to prepare a plan by next September to reduce carbon dioxide 33.5 percent from electric power sector by 2030. Experts, including Dr. Shaw, have determined the plan is expensive, unworkable, and illegal.
The Honorable Kathleen Hartnett White is a Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and the Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment. She is also former Chairman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2001-2007).
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.