Almost immediately after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule to repeal and replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced he will sue the Trump administration over this action.
The Clean Power Plan was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and cut power sector emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It is being replaced with the Affordable Clean Energy rule that provides states a greater degree of time and authority to determine how they can ease net emissions from coal-fired plants.
“The CPP would have asked low- and middle-income Americans to bear the costs of the previous administration”™s climate plan,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in finalizing the new rule yesterday. “One analysis predicted double-digit electricity price increases in 40 states under the CPP.”
However, Tong was not accepting Wheeler”™s forecast.
“There is nothing affordable or clean about coal,” he said in a statement. “The Trump administration is taking another giant step backwards in protecting our planet. They are trampling on the Clean Air Act and ignoring administrative law to finalize this outrageous rule. Connecticut is in close coordination with states across the nation and we are prepared to take legal action to block this measure. There is no serious debate ”“ climate change is a severe threat and we ignore science at our own peril.”
Tong did not say when or where he planned to file a lawsuit or whether he would be acting independently or with a coalition of other state attorneys general.
