Treehuggers, no more!

The Clean Power Plan is a joint effort between the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and our fight against climate change. This new strategy comes from years of environmental catastrophes and significant climate change that has been attributed to our carbon pollution. Finally, we have collected enough data recorded on these issues and the numerous stakeholders have come together to create national standards on the carbon pollution that power plants can generate.

Have I mentioned this is the first-ever national standards on carbon emissions from power plants? Why now? What will change? How will the plan be managed? Who does this affect? When will our power be clean? There’s a lot of questions and they seem simple, but the answers are not.

THE B-R-E-A-K-D-O-W-N

There’s no doubt the Clean Power Plan is the best thing that has happened to the energy industry in some time and things will change for the better, but it will take time. The program is a nation-wide effort to reduce carbon pollution or “greenhouse emissions” but will affect each state differently. President Obama, in his announcement about the program, stated just that. Obama said each city and state are in different positions to work towards aligning their power generation operations with the goals of the Clean Power Plan. It’s true. Many cities and states have different utility regulations and different kinds of operations for their power generation.

In competitive energy markets where energy consumers have choice in the company that supplies their electricity, there’s often choice in the type of electricity you wish to purchase. For example, in certain states, consumers can choose the cheapest electricity rate and have no concern for how that electricity is generated but, consumers can also choose from different options such as: Wind, Solar, etc. These “clean” energy solutions come at a higher price tag to the consumer but is left for the open market to decide whether it’s desirable or not, thus driving the market towards or against clean power generation.

Unfortunately, in other cities or states where consumers don’t have a choice of their energy supplier or the type of electricity generation they want, there’s no incentive for the power companies to implement clean energy solutions. This is mostly due to the high cost of clean energy generation. Take monopoly energy companies with safeguarded profits, strong political relationships and seemingly “high-costs” of clean energy solutions and you’re sure not to move towards a clean energy program. Until now.

Jeopardy Theme Song on Repeat…

So, why has it taken so long? Simple. Local government has been controlled by utility monopolies that were driven by blinded profits and political tithes that our stagnant energy industry. Years and years of negative climate change combined with data collection and projections by the EPA have finally got the Obama administration to pass along the new guidelines which will shape the future of energy for decades to come. The red tape took the EPA several Presidential administrations to produce a clean energy solutions plan that would be accepted. It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality so we have to live with that and move on.

Clean Change, Dirty Process

The Clean Power Plan will result in cleaner energy solutions for power generation but it won’t be very clean. It will be a mess for quite some time as governments, power companies, EPA, reliability organizations and other regulatory bodies all try to work in sync to follow-out the new Clean Power Plan. It will take some time and there will be a lot of changes with a lot of roadblocks on the way there. We can only hope that the roadblocks won’t be as large or take as much time as they did before this program is into effect.

Bottom Line

Without a doubt, the Clean Power Plan will create inevitable change forming clean energy solutions, promote clean energy jobs and will create nothing but positive change from all aspects of the program. The utility monopolies knew regulations were coming and that it was only a matter of time. Some power companies have been selling their prehistoric generation plants, their entire companies, and so on, all in attempts to run away with their money and not looking back. Can’t blame them. They weren’t prepared for the inevitable changes. That is the only explanation that makes sense because with the evolution of clean energy solutions expanding and regulations helping support the cause, the energy industry will power the our country into a new-found way that creates economic growth and a better, more healthy environment for our future. We were “treehuggers” then and now we are proven disruptors of the energy industry leading a cleaner, more prosperous nation.

To find more information about Climate Change or the Clean Power Plan, please visit the official White House website HERE!