Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The Trump Administration announced in 2017 that it is withdrawing the U.S. from the international Paris Agreement regarding climate change which went into full effect in 2016. More than half the states sued the EPA when it promulgated the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce power sector carbon emissions by 32 percent by 2030; thereafter, the Supreme Court stayed enforcement of the regulation, pending eventual review on the merits. The Trump Administration began efforts to repeal the Obama Administration CPP which was designed to satisfy the U.S. Paris Agreement commitments to curb CO 2 emissions from burning coal to generate electric power.

The CPP remains in protracted limbo, although even before, in 2017, the U.S. Department of Energy forecast that even the CCP was not demanding enough for the U.S. to achieve its Paris Agreement commitment to reduce CO2 emissions twenty-six to twenty-eight percent by 2025. This article examines recent data which suggests that the US. currently is on track under business-as-usual to reduce CO 2 emissions twenty-seven to thirty-five percent below baseline 2005 levels by 2030, even reaching the 2032 CPP-required levels of CO 2 reduction a full decade in advance, without assistance of the CPP now enjoined by the courts.

This article examines how this is possible under economic forces, what is happening to coal, the traditional work-horse of the electric power sector, and the ascendance of renewable energy alternatives. This article then pivots to look at the new dimension of land-use requirements to produce and transmit wind power from where it is most available to population centers.

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