Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new regulations designed to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by 30% by the year 2030. The Clean Power Plan, expected to be enacted by 2015 is an effort to curtail power plant emissions, which account for 40% of total US emissions.
The new regulations follow on the heels of the EPA’s report, Climate Change Indicators in the United States that documents increased sea level rise, tropical storms and large wildfires.
Over at FiveThirtyEight, an analysis of approaches is summarized in their article, The Cap Matters Most in Cap-And-Trade Markets.
The federal plan is also hoped to motivate countries such as China and India to enact similar regulations. Whereas US power plant emissions have been in decline, China’s emission have risen 52% since 2005. Today’s announcement may be part of negotiations to occur at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, slated to meet in Paris in 2015.