Attorney General Becerra Denounces President Trump’s Rule Dismantling Clean Power Plan

California vows to fight the illegal Dirty Power Plan as part of multistate coalition 

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra today issued the following statement in response to President’s Trump’s action repealing the Clean Power Plan and replacing it with a toothless substitute. The so-called Affordable Clean Energy Rule finalized today does nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or to promote clean energy generation. Instead, the new rule is merely designed to dismantle the Clean Power Plan and protect coal and gas companies from any serious limits on climate change emissions from power plants.

“President Trump’s Dirty Power Plan is more than just disgraceful and immoral, it is unlawful,” said Attorney General Becerra. “There is no justification for gutting a law that would have significantly reduced emissions and prevented thousands of premature deaths per year. While the Trump Administration might lack the necessary courage, we’re prepared to confront the climate crisis head-on.”

The Trump Administration’s new rule would repeal the Clean Power Plan, which is the culmination of a decade-long effort by partnering states and cities to require mandatory cuts in the emissions of climate change pollution from fossil fuel-burning power plants under the Clean Air Act. The Clean Power Plan was expected to eliminate as much climate change pollution as is emitted by more than 160 million cars a year – or 70 percent of the nation’s passenger cars – and was estimated to prevent up to 3,600 additional deaths annually.

Attorney General Becerra issued a statement in March 2017 preparing to defend the Clean Power Plan. In February 2018, he defended the Clean Power Plan in an EPA listening session in San Francisco. In August, he issued a strong statement upon the announcement of the Trump Administration’s proposal to dismantle the Clean Power Plan. Attorney General Becerra then joined a comment letter strongly criticizing the Trump Administration’s proposed Dirty Power Plan, a proposed rule to replace the Clean Power Plan. On December 2018, Attorney General Becerra entered the Fourth National Climate Assessment into the rulemaking records, further reinforcing the state coalition’s arguments for maintaining the standards to reduce emissions and mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. 

The multistate coalition, which has opposed the Trump Administration’s wrong-headed assault on the Clean Power Plan, includes the Attorneys General of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia; and the cities of Boulder, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and South Miami; and Broward County.