For some time, we have been dancing on the edge of a precipice, dipping precariously over the edge now and then. Last month, we fell over. Climate scientists reported that the level of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere had exceeded 400 parts per million and were likely to stay there indefinitely.
The same experts have been telling us that we should not allow the level to exceed 350 ppm. Unfortunately, we’re not likely to see anything short of 400 ppm in our lifetime and, at the rate we’re going, we’ll cross the 500 ppm threshold in only 33 years.
Forget all the numbers. Put more simply, we have pushed the planet past its limit. Scientists quantified that limit for us so we could do everything we could to avoid it, but we failed. All hope is not lost, but the only way to rein in our warming atmosphere is to do what we should have done in the first place and figure out what our carbon budget must be. We must go on a carbon diet until we can quit carbon altogether.
The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan was not developed with a strict carbon budget in mind. The Environmental Protection Agency has targeted a too little, too late 32% decrease in carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 2030. The plan calls for states to develop plans of their own to lay out how they will meet individual targets set by the EPA. Pennsylvania’s target is a 23% decrease.
Unfortunately, the CPP’s weak target is just one of many problems it poses. Just as a dieter cannot be selective about which calories to count, governments cannot be selective about which emissions to count, yet that’s what occurs throughout the plan.
For instance, the plan only counts emissions coming from the stacks at power plants. That automatically overlooks all of the raw methane leaks that occur at every point in the production of natural gas. Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas is a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more heat-trapping the carbon dioxide is in the time we have left to address climate change. Although the EPA once considered those leaks to be so negligible that it didn’t even include them in its greenhouse gas inventory of oil & gas operations, we have all since learned that the leaks are substantial, so substantial that they wipe out any benefit natural gas provides by emitting less carbon dioxide than coal or oil when it is burned.
The plan also allows states, at their discretion, to exempt some power plants altogether. Natural gas power plants built after January 8, 2014 do not need to be included in the plan, meaning the emissions from their stacks do not need to be counted. Pennsylvanians Against Fracking submitted a Right-to-Know request to the DEP to find out how many power plants it had approved since January 2014. The agency responded with a list of more than 40. To put that number in perspective, Pennsylvania currently has about 200 power plants. The sharp increase in natural gas power plants operating outside of the plan will allow the state to meet its emissions targets on paper, but only on paper.
The plan also has nothing to say about fossil fuel production. Obviously, natural gas production would increase to serve all of those new power plants and others that have been proposed. Pennsylvanians Against Fracking’s own research of stories in newspapers and industry publications elicited an additional 15 plants not on the DEP’s list. According to power sector analysts, coal production is likely to increase, as well. That may be a bit more surprising considering that the centerpiece of the Clean Power Plan has been the transition away from coal-fired power to something else. Because the plan does not address limiting production of fossil fuels to serve the power sector, the analysts believe that coal could well be produced to serve the power sector, just in a different country by the export of coal overseas, already a burgeoning market. And, in the end, the atmosphere doesn’t care whether or not the emissions are coming from Pennsylvania.
We need a Clean Power Plan, but one that honestly assesses the total emissions from the power sector and works within the confines of a carefully calculated carbon diet. The current plan that only counts the emissions it wants to count and lets states get away with counting even fewer is the worst kind of fad diet that will only do us irreparable harm in the end.
Read Pennsylvanians Against Fracking’s statements on the Clean Power Plan.