FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2019
Contact: Laura McMillan, 203-787-0646
CFE/Save the Sound denounces Clean Power Plan rollback
NEW HAVEN, CONN.—Today the Trump administration rolled back the landmark Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era effort that targets coal-fired power plants and their dirty climate-destroying emissions.
President Trump’s new plan will replace the Obama rule with a less ambitious one, giving states more discretion to set their own carbon emissions standards for coal-fired power plants.
Charles Rothenberger, climate and energy attorney for Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound:
“This is an appalling step backward. Whereas the Clean Power Plan recognized and harnessed existing market forces to accelerate the transition to cleaner low-carbon energy sources, this replacement plan places increasingly anachronistic coal-fired generation on life-support in an attempt to slow its decline into the history books. Rather than positioning the United States as a leader in energy technology, this plan seeks to not only halt the progress we have made, but renew our commitment to a dirty 19th-century technology as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century.
“When EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler said ‘the contrast between our approach and the Green New Deal or plans like it couldn’t be clearer,’ he was right on the money—the Green New Deal is a vision for a future with clean air to breathe, quality jobs, and a safe climate. Extending America’s fossil fuel addiction is indeed the opposite.
“Calling this new plan ‘affordable clean energy’ is a cruel joke when we know the costs are borne by rural communities hurt by ever-more-destructive coal mining practices and individuals living near fossil fuel power plants that pollute their air.
“We applaud Governor Lamont and Commissioner Dykes for their strong statements opposing this regressive move by the Trump administration. Connecticut and its northeast neighbors have a history of state-level and regional-level leadership on truly clean energy like solar and offshore wind, and we’ll keep fighting to advance them.”
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