No one government agency should have so much control over the economy, Donald Trump argued on the campaign trail. Now in the White House, the clock is ticking and the president is counting down the hours until the end of the Clean Power Plan.
Next week, President Trump plans to repeal the sweeping environmental regulation by executive order, and he doesn’t plan on replacing it. For business, that’s great news.
Drawn up by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Power Plan represented the heart of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. It would’ve set limits on carbon emissions and imposed thousands of new regulations at a significant cost to the American economy. Once it’s gone, the fossil fuel industry can let out a collective sigh of relief.
The exact savings from rolling back the Clean Power Plan depend on the analysis. The Environmental Protection Agency projected compliance cost would total around $9 billion annually. But the agency claimed that cost would be recouped in health benefits from a cleaner environment.
A later estimate by the NERA Economic Consulting firm estimated that costs far outweighed any savings. That group projected expenses upwards of $39 billion each year, an amount a little more than Wisconsin’s total FY16 budget.
All of this is welcome news to a fossil fuels industry, beaten and battered after eight years of Obama’s regulation.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
