clean power plan

Your chart has per capita co2 reduction in 7 years 2005-2012, being 27%, but 2012-2030 only 25%. That is a much longer time to have a smaller reduction. For much of the country the reduction has been relatively painless. We have $0.0984/kwh average retail price for all sectors in 2012 versus $0.0814 in 2005. If you adjust for inflation that is $0.0956, or 0.28 cents more per kwh, not very much for the ghg reduction.

State Electricity Profiles - Energy Information Administration
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/archive/062905.pdf

The reason it was so cheap was the reduced cost and great expansion of natural gas along with the low cost of wind. Energy economists don't think the next reduction will be as cheap as you are going to have to replace 40+ year old coal and nuclear plants, and that takes capital. Those plants were paid for so only fuel and maintenance is included. Still ccgt natural gas and wind are probably cheaper if you include pollution costs and risks than new nuclear or coal. Solar probably is more expensive but prices are coming down, and say we go from 0.5% today to 7.5% in 2030, and it costs an extra $0.10/kwh, that only will add 0.7 cents to average retail price.

I agree you shouldn't suger coat it, but costs to industry are highest with uncertainty. This plan gives companies some certainty with regulation. Remember its not a 25% reduction in energy use per capita, its of electrical ghg. Some want 80% reduction from 1990 by 2050, that is a much tougher goal. This one is a little tougher than I would like, simply because some states like kentucky and west virginia will fight it hard, not because technically or economically it is difficult to achieve.

 

Clean power plan seems more honest than cap and tax, but yes lots of politics.

Those spare ng plants didn't just happen to be there, they were built after bush 41 and clinton rolled back the anti natural gas laws that were passed in the 1970s, and started talking about restricting coal pollution. Lower natural gas prices were part of economics and actions during the clinton DOE to help find less expensive ways to extract natural gas. Industry and government working together Changes took over a decade to really happen. Now is not the time to decide those '70s policies were good ones. Still we don't want to make the same mistakes and haphazardly throw coal and nuclear under the bus too fast. I don't think this plan does that either.

I haven't checked the math, but IMHO some states like california will do more than the plan and sell credits to some other states. If other states offer enough money texas, iowa, and others may reduce faster. We'll see what the states come up with.

 

http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-08/documents/cpp-final-rule.pdf
goals for each state are in table 13. I have no idea how much they add up to being.

Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and other geologically distant places are handle differently.

 

I'd check your math. I couldn't download epa table 13 as a spreadsheet, but eia allows it for 2012. They have 1996.8 million metric tons of co2 from those 48 states in electrical power. That should be 2201 short tons in 2012. If you are getting 2202 from table 13, that is no reduction from 2012.

 

Sure spread sheet here by sector.
Environment - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

I removed alaska and hawaii, and just used electrical sector, which I believe is what the clean power plan targets in its tables. Now looking at table 13 there is a horrible mismatch. Your figure included combined heat and power, but that is not enough, so I am clueless on calculations of EGU's (electrical genearting units).

I am now confused like you.this is how they say they calculate from the document, which seems quite different from eia.

Map: Stacking up the states under the Clean Power Plan | Grist

So here we have grist's reading which is reductions in lbs/mwh, It has virginia improving 37% in emissions per mwh. It has before and after, you can use your own estimates of how many more or less Mwh each state will be using in 2030. States like mine will be using more with population growth and more air conditioning with hotter summers then. Illinois, the presidents adopted home state, has it particularly rough needing a 44% reduction, but can go for mass based instead and it may lose population. Cheapest way may be to improve the grid to Iowa and use more of its wind while closing lots of coal and building natural gas.

 

Don't want to send this to Fred's house of pancakes, but yes its written in a totally confusing way, which is how the EPA does these things. Transparency would be nice, but unfortunately this is not it.

 

The reason I thought they were doing something really weird was looking at virginia mass based.
http://www.epa.gov/airquality/cpptoolbox/virginia.pdf
2012 27,365,439 short tons, similar to the source I gave you from eia
2030 27,433,111 short tons, the reduction doesn't exist its an increase if Virginia chooses mass based from table 13 of the plan.

They are projecting an actual reduction to 26,433,868 in 2020 without any additional rules at all.

That is why I figured something was very wrong. Although this is probably a reduction per capita, it is an actual increase in ghg emissions for virginia. Since the spread sheet