Clean Power Plan Provides Path for Safer Climate, Catalyst for Clean Energy Jobs in the Southeast

Charlottesville, VA – This afternoon the Obama Administration will release the final version of the Clean Power Plan, the country’s strongest action ever to reduce carbon pollution and pave the way for cleaner and more affordable energy choices.

Over the next fifteen years, the Clean Power Plan will cut by a third carbon emissions from power plants, currently the nation’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. While the final version will achieve even more ambitious pollution reductions nationally than the proposed rule, it continues to provide maximum flexibility for each state to meet its unique state-based target in the most cost-effective way.

In response to today’s announcement, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Frank Rambo, leader of the organization’s Clean Energy and Air program, released the following statement:

“The release of the Clean Power Plan today is a milestone event for the country, but for states in the Southeast the real work now begins. We need to make smart choices about how we can meet these targets, which will improve public health by reducing pollution while also providing the opportunity for new jobs through clean energy investments.

“While the public health and climate benefits for us and future generations are reason enough to take action, the Clean Power Plan promises significant economic benefits as a major jobs driver. We have the potential to attract new businesses to our states and to create thousands of good-paying, local jobs by producing power from cleaner sources like solar and wind, and making better use of the energy we do produce through energy efficiency programs.

“The reality is the strategies to meet the Clean Power Plan reflect the energy shift already underway in our states: we’re embracing smarter, cleaner, cheaper energy options that would be happening with or without this plan. As a result, our states are well-positioned to meet these reasonable and inevitable pollution reduction targets.

“The bottom line is we need the Clean Power Plan to protect the Southeast’s vulnerable resources from climate change, but we can also use the Clean Power Plan to accelerate our region's job-generating shift to clean power.”

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The Southern Environmental Law Center is a regional nonprofit using the power of the law to protect the health and environment of the Southeast (Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama). Founded in 1986, SELC's team of more than 60 legal and policy experts represent more than 100 partner groups on issues of climate change and energy, air and water quality, forests, the coast and wetlands, transportation, and land use. www.SouthernEnvironment.org