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A desire to please the Court may have rendered the EPA’s new power plant rule a little too ineffectual.
If nothing else, give the Environmental Protection Agency credit for this: They seem to understand the assignment.
Last year, the Supreme Court struck down the Clean Power Plan, President Barack Obama’s ambitious attempt to restrict carbon pollution from power plants. That proposal never carried the force of law, and it had been held in suspended animation by the Court — and later the Trump administration — since 2016. But after President Joe Biden took office, Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s conservative majority revived it seemingly entirely for the sake of deeming it illegal.
The proposal went far beyond what was allowed by Congress, Roberts ruled. Normally, an EPA standard would require that power plants or factories install some kind of equipment on their smoke stacks to meet a pollution cap. “By contrast, and by design,” the Obama proposal could only be satisfied by burning less coal, the chief justice wrote. It required “generation shifting,” forcing states to get more of their power from renewable, nuclear, or natural-gas plants.
That overreached the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, Roberts declared. If the EPA wanted to regulate greenhouse gases, then it needed to treat them like a normal air pollutant — and it needed to act like a normal technocratic agency. Above all, it had to keep its regulations to those that could be accomplished “inside the fenceline” of each power plant.
So last week, when the Biden administration finally unveiled its own draft attempt at regulating carbon pollution from power plants, it knew it was playing on the Court’s, well, court. And it behaved accordingly. The best thing you can say about the EPA’s new power-plant proposal — which will be one of the Biden era’s most important climate regulations — is that it was meticulously, painstakingly tailored to the Court’s demands. If Chief Justice Roberts asked for a normal rule, then the EPA has delivered one so awkwardly, self-consciously normal that it seems a little like a narc. The worst thing about the new rule is that this desire to please the Court may have rendered the rule a little too ineffectual.
If America wants to fight climate change, it must clean up its power plants. Generating abundant, cheap, zero-carbon electricity is the key to the country’s decarbonization strategy.
“If you clean up the power sector, it enables you to clean up other sectors of the economy too, through electrification,” Leah Stokes, an environmental-science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told me. “Electric cars, heat pumps, induction stoves — all these machines can be fueled with clean power.”
Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, will slash emissions from the sector over the next decade, according to federal and independent modeling efforts. But it won’t get the sector all the way there. That’s where the new proposal is supposed to step in.
As per the Supreme Court’s request, the proposal details how every kind of power plant — even those that burn coal or natural gas — can meet their climate requirements for decades to come. It mandates a buildout of carbon capture and storage infrastructure, or CCS, for most coal and some natural-gas plants that plan to stay open long-term.
“The EPA rule makes sure everyone is on the same level-playing field. If the Inflation Reduction Act is enough to incentivize CCS in some places, the EPA is gonna make sure everyone is gonna do it,” Nick Bryner, a law professor at Louisiana State University, told me. “I think it’s designed very, very well to work in tandem with the IRA tax credits.”
If the IRA is the regulatory-friendly angel on its shoulder, then the Supreme Court’s decision last year — called West Virginia v. EPA — is the devil. The EPA’s desire to stay on the Court’s good side is even visible in the proposal’s name. Previous administrations have tried to give their power-plant rules a memorable name — Obama had the Clean Power Plan, of course, and the Trump administration christened its effort the “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” or ACE. The Biden administration, by comparison, named the new proposal:
New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule
That’s the NSPSGHGNMRFFFEGU; EGGGEEFFFGU; RACE Rule for short.
I would say that the agency couldn’t have given it a more technocratic name if it tried, except that it obviously tried very hard. “Traditional approach, traditional name,” the EPA’s press office chirped when the Politico reporter Alex Guillén first noted the name. Just what the Supreme Court asked for!, they all but added. The agency is so desperate to look obedient and demure that even its social-media team has been briefed on current federal doctrine.
At the same time, the rule does “a tremendous amount to make the rule as flexible as possible given the constraints they’re working with in West Virginia v. EPA,” Bryner said. Under the proposal, some natural-gas plants can choose between installing carbon-capture equipment or burning low-carbon hydrogen.
But the rules may have erred on the side of too much flexibility, says Charles Harper, a policy analyst at Evergreen, a climate advocacy group and think tank. Evergreen and other environmental groups are worried that the rules might be too generous to fossil fuel companies. They’re focusing their criticism on two elements of the draft: its handling of natural-gas plants and coal retirements.
First, the EPA rule as proposed would not apply to an overwhelming majority of the country’s natural-gas plants.
A large share of carbon emissions from natural-gas plants come from so-called “baseload” plants that generate many hundreds of megawatts of electricity at all hours of the day. The rule focuses on these facilities, and it requires them either to install CCS equipment or to burn hydrogen fuel.
But the rule is not nearly so strict about small or medium-sized natural-gas plants. Natural-gas plants that generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity — or that run less than half the time — are essentially exempt from the rule. This excludes 77% of the country’s natural-gas plants from the new EPA proposal, requiring them to make no changes through 2040.
It is unclear what share of carbon emissions these natural-gas plants represent. The EPA did not provide an estimate of their carbon emissions before the deadline for this story.
As a whole, natural-gas power plants emit 43% of the U.S. electricity sector’s carbon pollution, despite producing nearly twice as much power as coal.
Environmental groups say the proposal’s coal problem is simpler to fix. In the draft, the EPA puts coal-fired power plants in different categories depending on when they’re slated to retire. Plants that have no retirement date — or that will remain open after 2040 — must install equipment to capture 90% of their emissions by the year 2030. Plants shutting down after 2035 must make a cheaper set of changes. And plants due to close by 2032 don’t have to make any changes at all, so long as they don’t increase their emissions over the next decade.
Those deadlines are too long from now, and the EPA should bring them forward in time when it issues a final version of the rule, Harper said. “2040 is pretty far out and would entail a lot of unabated emissions hitting the climate and human health,” he told me.
The EPA still has time to edit this proposal; it will hear public comment over the next few months and probably issue a final version of the rule next year. With the procedural issues resolved, the Supreme Court’s ability to object to that rule is limited to whether carbon capture is feasible and affordable enough to be used under the Clean Air Act.
If there is a bright spot for climate advocates in the new rule, it’s that the Biden administration — and last year’s Democratic majority in Congress — seem to have anticipated that move.
As the House was voting on the IRA last year, Representative Frank Pallone, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, put a statement in the congressional record saying that the EPA should take the IRA’s generous tax credits into account when proposing power-plant rules. The subsidies should be considered when the agency is deciding whether CCS is feasible and affordable, he said. The EPA cites Pallone’s statement in its new draft.
But ultimately it is Chief Justice John Roberts who will get to decide. Almost a decade ago, a set of conservative states sued the EPA to block it from requiring CCS. That issue has since been held in its own state of suspended animation. It may soon breathe again.
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What he wants them to do is one thing. What they’ll actually do is far less certain.
Donald Trump believes that tariffs have almost magical power to bring prosperity; as he said last month, “To me, the world’s most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariffs. It’s my favorite word.” In case anyone doubted his sincerity, before Thanksgiving he announced his intention to impose 25% tariffs on everything coming from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese goods.
This is just the beginning. If the trade war he launched in his first term was haphazard and accomplished very little except costing Americans money, in his second term he plans to go much further. And the effects of these on clean energy and climate change will be anything but straightforward.
The theory behind tariffs is that by raising the price of an imported good, they give a stronger footing in the market; eventually, the domestic producer may no longer need the tariff to be competitive. Imposing a tariff means we’ve decided that a particular industry is important enough that it needs this kind of support — or as some might call it, protection — even if it means higher prices for a while.
The problem with across-the-board tariffs of the kind Trump proposes is that they create higher prices even for goods that are not being produced domestically and probably never will be. If tariffs raise the price of a six-pack of tube socks at Target from $9.99 to $14.99, it won’t mean we’ll start making tube socks in America again. It just means you’ll pay more. The same is often true for domestic industries that use foreign parts in their manufacturing: If no one is producing those parts domestically, their costs will unavoidably rise.
The U.S. imported over $3 trillion worth of goods in 2023, and $426 billion from China alone, so Trump’s proposed tariffs would represent hundreds of billions of dollars of increased costs. That’s before we account for the inevitable retaliatory tariffs, which is what we saw in Trump’s first term: He imposed tariffs on China, which responded by choking off its imports of American agricultural goods. In the end, the revenue collected from Trump’s tariffs went almost entirely to bailing out farmers whose export income disappeared.
The past almost-four years under Joe Biden have seen a series of back-and-forth moves in which new tariffs were announced, other tariffs were increased, exemptions were removed and reinstated. For instance, this May Biden increased the tariff on Chinese electric vehicles to over 100% while adding tariffs on certain EV batteries. But some of the provisions didn’t take effect right away, and only certain products were affected, so the net economic impact was minimal. And there’s been nothing like an across-the-board tariff.
It’s reasonable to criticize Biden’s tariff policies related to climate. But his administration was trying to navigate a dilemma, serving two goals at once: reducing emissions and promoting the development of domestic clean energy technology. Those goals are not always in alignment, at least in the short run, which we can see in the conflict within the solar industry. Companies that sell and install solar equipment benefit from cheap Chinese imports and therefore oppose tariffs, while domestic manufacturers want the tariffs to continue so they can be more competitive. The administration has attempted to accommodate both interests with a combination of subsidies to manufacturers and tariffs on certain kinds of imports — with exemptions peppered here and there. It’s been a difficult balancing act.
Then there are electric vehicles. The world’s largest EV manufacturer is Chinese company BYD, but if you haven’t seen any of their cars on the road, it’s because existing tariffs make it virtually impossible to import Chinese EVs to the United States. That will continue to be the case under Trump, and it would have been the case if Kamala Harris had been elected.
On one hand, it’s important for America to have the strongest possible green industries to insulate us from future supply shocks and create as many jobs-of-the-future as possible. On the other hand, that isn’t necessarily the fastest route to emissions reductions. In a world where we’ve eliminated all tariffs on EVs, the U.S. market would be flooded with inexpensive, high-quality Chinese EVs. That would dramatically accelerate adoption, which would be good for the climate.
But that would also deal a crushing blow to the American car industry, which is why neither party will allow it. What may happen, though, is that Chinese car companies may build factories in Mexico, or even here in the U.S., just as many European and Japanese companies have, so that their cars wouldn’t be subject to tariffs. That will take time.
Of course, whatever happens will depend on Trump following through with his tariff promise. We’ve seen before how he declares victory even when he only does part of what he promised, which could happen here. Once he begins implementing his tariffs, his administration will be immediately besieged by a thousand industries demanding exemptions, carve-outs, and delays in the tariffs that affect them. Many will have powerful advocates — members of Congress, big donors, and large groups of constituents — behind them. It’s easy to imagine how “across-the-board” tariffs could, in practice, turn into Swiss cheese.
There’s no way to know yet which parts of the energy transition will be in the cheese, and which parts will be in the holes. The manufacturers can say that helping them will stick it to China; the installers may not get as friendly an audience with Trump and his team. And the EV tariffs certainly aren’t going anywhere.
There’s a great deal of uncertainty, but one thing is clear: This is a fight that will continue for the entirety of Trump’s term, and beyond.
Give the people what they want — big, family-friendly EVs.
The star of this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show was the Hyundai Ioniq 9, a rounded-off colossus of an EV that puts Hyundai’s signature EV styling on a three-row SUV cavernous enough to carry seven.
I was reminded of two years ago, when Hyundai stole the L.A. show with a different EV: The reveal of Ioniq 6, its “streamliner” aerodynamic sedan that looked like nothing else on the market. By comparison, Ioniq 9 is a little more banal. It’s a crucial vehicle that will occupy the large end of Hyundai's excellent and growing lineup of electric cars, and one that may sell in impressive numbers to large families that want to go electric. Even with all the sleek touches, though, it’s not quite interesting. But it is big, and at this moment in electric vehicles, big is what’s in.
The L.A. show is one the major events on the yearly circuit of car shows, where the car companies traditionally reveal new models for the media and show off their whole lineups of vehicles for the public. Given that California is the EV capital of America, carmakers like to talk up their electric models here.
Hyundai’s brand partner, Kia, debuted a GT performance version of its EV9, adding more horsepower and flashy racing touches to a giant family SUV. Jeep reminded everyone of its upcoming forays into full-size and premium electric SUVs in the form of the Recon and the Wagoneer S. VW trumpeted the ID.Buzz, the long-promised electrified take on the classic VW Microbus that has finally gone on sale in America. The VW is the quirkiest of the lot, but it’s a design we’ve known about since 2017, when the concept version was revealed.
Boring isn’t the worst thing in the world. It can be a sign of a maturing industry. At auto shows of old, long before this current EV revolution, car companies would bring exotic, sci-fi concept cars to dial up the intrigue compared to the bread-and-butter, conservatively styled vehicles that actually made them gobs of money. During the early EV years, electrics were the shiny thing to show off at the car show. Now, something of the old dynamic has come to the electric sector.
Acura and Chrysler brought wild concepts to Los Angeles that were meant to signify the direction of their EVs to come. But most of the EVs in production looked far more familiar. Beyond the new hulking models from Hyundai and Kia, much of what’s on offer includes long-standing models, but in EV (Chevy Equinox and Blazer) or plug-in hybrid (Jeep Grand Cherokee and Wrangler) configurations. One of the most “interesting” EVs on the show floor was the Cybertruck, which sat quietly in a barely-staffed display of Tesla vehicles. (Elon Musk reveals his projects at separate Tesla events, a strategy more carmakers have begun to steal as a way to avoid sharing the spotlight at a car show.)
The other reason boring isn’t bad: It’s what the people want. The majority of drivers don’t buy an exotic, fun vehicle. They buy a handsome, spacious car they can afford. That last part, of course, is where the problem kicks in.
We don’t yet know the price of the Ioniq 9, but it’s likely to be in the neighborhood of Kia’s three-row electric, the EV9, which starts in the mid-$50,000s and can rise steeply from there. Stellantis’ forthcoming push into the EV market will start with not only pricey premium Jeep SUVs, but also some fun, though relatively expensive, vehicles like the heralded Ramcharger extended-range EV truck and the Dodge Charger Daytona, an attempt to apply machismo-oozing, alpha-male muscle-car marketing to an electric vehicle.
You can see the rationale. It costs a lot to build a battery big enough to power a big EV, so they’re going to be priced higher. Helpfully for the car brands, Americans have proven they will pay a premium for size and power. That’s not to say we’re entering an era of nothing but bloated EV battleships. Models such as the overpowered electric Dodge Charger and Kia EV9 GT will reveal the appetite for performance EVs. Smaller models like the revived Chevy Bolt and Kia’s EV3, already on sale overseas, are coming to America, tax credit or not.
The question for the legacy car companies is where to go from here. It takes years to bring a vehicle from idea to production, so the models on offer today were conceived in a time when big federal support for EVs was in place to buoy the industry through its transition. Now, though, the automakers have some clear uncertainty about what to say.
Chevy, having revealed new electrics like the Equinox EV elsewhere, did not hold a media conference at the L.A. show. Ford, which is having a hellacious time losing money on its EVs, used its time to talk up combustion vehicles including a new version of the palatial Expedition, one of the oversized gas-guzzlers that defined the first SUV craze of the 1990s.
If it’s true that the death of federal subsidies will send EV sales into a slump, we may see messaging from Detroit and elsewhere that feels decidedly retro, with very profitable combustion front-and-center and the all-electric future suddenly less of a talking point. Whatever happens at the federal level, EVs aren’t going away. But as they become a core part of the car business, they are going to get less exciting.
Current conditions: Parts of southwest France that were freezing last week are now experiencing record high temperatures • Forecasters are monitoring a storm system that could become Australia’s first named tropical cyclone of this season • The Colorado Rockies could get several feet of snow today and tomorrow.
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, according to AccuWeather. “For perspective, this would equate to nearly 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter. The figure accounts for long-term economic impacts including job losses, medical costs, drops in tourism, and recovery expenses. “The combination of extremely warm water temperatures, a shift toward a La Niña pattern and favorable conditions for development created the perfect storm for what AccuWeather experts called ‘a supercharged hurricane season,’” said AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. “This was an exceptionally powerful and destructive year for hurricanes in America, despite an unusual and historic lull during the climatological peak of the season.”
AccuWeather
This year’s hurricane season produced 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes. Five hurricanes made landfall, two of which were major storms. According to NOAA, an “average” season produces 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. The season comes to an end on November 30.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced yesterday that if President-elect Donald Trump scraps the $7,500 EV tax credit, California will consider reviving its Clean Vehicle Rebate Program. The CVRP ran from 2010 to 2023 and helped fund nearly 600,000 EV purchases by offering rebates that started at $5,000 and increased to $7,500. But the program as it is now would exclude Tesla’s vehicles, because it is aimed at encouraging market competition, and Tesla already has a large share of the California market. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has cozied up to Trump, called California’s potential exclusion of Tesla “insane,” though he has said he’s okay with Trump nixing the federal subsidies. Newsom would need to go through the State Legislature to revive the program.
President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday he would impose steep new tariffs on all goods imported from China, Canada, and Mexico on day one of his presidency in a bid to stop “drugs” and “illegal aliens” from entering the United States. Specifically, Trump threatened Canada and Mexico each with a 25% tariff, and China with a 10% hike on existing levies. Such moves against three key U.S. trade partners would have major ramifications across many sectors, including the auto industry. Many car companies import vehicles and parts from plants in Mexico. The Canadian government responded with a statement reminding everyone that “Canada is essential to U.S. domestic energy supply, and last year 60% of U.S. crude oil imports originated in Canada.” Tariffs would be paid by U.S. companies buying the imported goods, and those costs would likely trickle down to consumers.
Amazon workers across the world plan to begin striking and protesting on Black Friday “to demand justice, fairness, and accountability” from the online retail giant. The protests are organized by the UNI Global Union’s Make Amazon Pay Campaign, which calls for better working conditions for employees and a commitment to “real environmental sustainability.” Workers in more than 20 countries including the U.S. are expected to join the protests, which will continue through Cyber Monday. Amazon’s carbon emissions last year totalled 68.8 million metric tons. That’s about 3% below 2022 levels, but more than 30% above 2019 levels.
Researchers from MIT have developed an AI tool called the “Earth Intelligence Engine” that can simulate realistic satellite images to show people what an area would look like if flooded by extreme weather. “Visualizing the potential impacts of a hurricane on people’s homes before it hits can help residents prepare and decide whether to evacuate,” wrote Jennifer Chu at MIT News. The team found that AI alone tended to “hallucinate,” generating images of flooding in areas that aren’t actually susceptible to a deluge. But when combined with a science-backed flood model, the tool became more accurate. “One of the biggest challenges is encouraging people to evacuate when they are at risk,” said MIT’s Björn Lütjens, who led the research. “Maybe this could be another visualization to help increase that readiness.” The tool is still in development and is available online. Here is an image it generated of flooding in Texas:
Maxar Open Data Program via Gupta et al., CVPR Workshop Proceedings. Lütjens et al., IEEE TGRS
A new installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris lets visitors listen to the sounds of endangered and extinct animals – along with the voice of the artist behind the piece, the one and only Björk.