New Report: America’s Dirtiest Power Plants: Polluters on a Global Scale

With news headlines reminding us that global warming is here and already having an impact on the environment and public health, Frontier Group's new report with Environment America Research and Policy Center documents how pollution from American power plants is playing a disproportionate role in fueling the changes to our climate. With U.S. power generation responsible for a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening and implementing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recently proposed Clean Power Plan is perhaps the most significant single action the United States can take to become a world leader in tackling global warming.

Tom Van Heeke

Policy Analyst

In the past two weeks alone, my morning news digests have informed me that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have hit a record high, that August 2014 was the hottest month globally since record-keeping began in 1880, and that some of the megadrought conditions we’re beginning to see in the American Southwest are just a teaser of what’s in store as the planet warms.

The fact is that almost daily we are confronted by headlines that remind us that global warming is not a distant problem, but rather is happening now and changing our climate in ways that could devastate public health and the environment.

They are also a reminder of the urgent need for bold action to tackle the causes of global warming. Our new report with Environment America Research and Policy Center, America’s Dirtiest Power Plants: Polluters on a Global Scale, shows how addressing carbon dioxide emissions from American power plants can make a globally significant reduction in global warming pollution.

Electricity generation in the United States – particularly at the country’s coal plants – produces breathtaking amounts of carbon dioxide, the leading pollutant responsible for global warming. Altogether, U.S. power plants are accountable for 40 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions, and almost as much global warming pollution as the entire economies of Canada, Mexico, and South America combined.

Addressing pollution from power plants, therefore, represents perhaps the most significant single action the United States can take. As the report documents, under the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan the United States would cut pollution from power plants 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Such a reduction would be felt on a global scale, and would position the United States to be an international leader in tackling global warming.  

Like making a down payment as the first step toward one day owning a home, implementation of the Clean Power Plan is a necessary but insufficient condition for an emissions reduction scenario that maximizes our chances of averting the worst consequences of global warming. But as the report makes clear, with so much of the planet’s carbon pollution coming from America’s dirtiest power plants, we will never get there without taking this action first.

Authors

Tom Van Heeke

Policy Analyst