President Barack Obama officially unveiled an ambitious new plan aimed at preventing, or at least significantly lessening, climate change during a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, reports the BBC.
One of the key parts of President Obama's plan is to limit emissions from both new and existing coal-burning power plants, a move that is sure to earn the ire of the coal industry and Republicans. Coal-burning power plants are the largest contributor of carbon emissions in the U.S., according to CNN.
Ahead of President Obama's statement Lisa Miller, from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, told Politico that the president's standards are not rooted in reality.
"Even brand new, state-of-the-art plants wouldn't be able to meet these regulations," Miller said.
The coal industry has been expecting stronger regulations to come down at some point but feels that the president is not able to make such drastic changes to policy through executive order alone, and if it goes to Congress they are confident that such changes won't pass, according to Politico.
"The industry for a long time has been expecting this," Miller said. "We've got a really good sense of where people are on energy and coal specifically...In none of those conversations has there been any sentiment about what's going to be coming from the administration."
Since he first came to office President Obama has been hoping to be able to get some legislation passed that would help end global warming but has been unable to do so thanks to a Congress that seems to be deadlocked on most bills they attempt to pass. By unveiling his plans with an executive order President Obama has found a way to implement the regulations without needing Congressional approval, according to Fox News.
In addition to the new regulations on carbon emissions President Obama is going to call for more renewable energy sources to be placed on public land, aiming to double the current capacity and power 6 million homes by the year 2020, according to Fox News.
One noticeable omission from the president's new plan is that there is no mention of the Keystone XL pipeline that has been fought over for years. Environmentalists strongly oppose the building of the oil pipeline that will lead from Canada all of the way to Texas. Experts speculate that while finally acting on the environment in a meaningful way that the president didn't want to alienate environmentalists at the same time by announcing a decision on the pipeline, which he is expected to support, according to Time.
In addition to capping carbon emissions and building more renewable sources of energy President Obama is going to make up to $8 billion in loan guarantees for projects aimed to increase fuel efficiency, enact tougher efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings and create new strategies to deal with climate adaptation, according to Time.
The plan can be read in its entirety here.
