Press Release  AG Healey Joins Broad Coalition in Opposing Trump’s Executive Order Dismantling the Clean Power Plan

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today joined a coalition of 23 states, cities and counties in issuing the following statement in response to President Trump’s Executive Order, which the administration described as paving the way to eliminating the Clean Power Plan rule:

“We strongly oppose President Trump’s executive order that seeks to dismantle the Clean Power Plan.

Addressing our country’s largest source of carbon pollution—existing fossil fuel-burning power plants—is both required under the Clean Air Act and essential to mitigating climate change’s growing harm to our public health, environments, and economies.  

We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve—including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change.” 

In December 2016, Massachusetts was part of a coalition of 19 states and local governments that sent a letter  to then President-elect Trump urging him to continue the federal government’s defense of the Clean Power Plan. The letter asked the president-elect to reject the “misguided advice” of a group of states led by West Virginia that the Clean Power Plan be discarded.

President Barack Obama announced the Clean Power Plan in August 2015. After final regulations to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from existing power plants were issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a group of state and industry petitioners challenged the Clean Power Plan in federal court. In November 2015, a coalition of 25 states, cities and counties intervened in defense of the Clean Power Plan against the challenge in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court heard oral arguments in late September, and a decision is expected soon.

The Clean Power Plan 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, along with the companion rule applicable to new, modified, and reconstructed power plants, will control these emissions by setting limits on the amount of climate change pollution that power plants can emit. The rule for existing plants is 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.

EPA adopted the Clean Power Plan through a multi-year stakeholder process that drew heavily on the experience of states and utilities in reducing power plant greenhouse gas emissions. Massachusetts has already taken a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by moving forward with its own programs, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Global Warming Solutions Act, energy efficiency programs, and standards to promote greater reliance on renewable energy. Massachusetts and its partners recognize that, on such a crucial issue that is already costing taxpayers billions of dollars in storm response and other costs, state action alone will not be enough and strong federal actions like the Clean Power Plan are needed.

For years, the AG’s Office has been a leader in pursuing federal regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, including leading a coalition of states, in coordination with numerous environmental groups, in the landmark Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA..

Joining AG Healey in the statement today are the attorneys general of New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia, along with the chief legal officers of the cities of Boulder, Colo., Chicago, Ill., New York City, Philadelphia, Pa., Broward County, Fla. and South Miami, Fla.

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