President Biden’s EPA has proposed new rules to limit global warming pollution from power plants, and if done right, they could eliminate up to 90% of global warming pollution from the electric sector!

But the draft rules have some big loopholes that need to be closed in order to hit President Biden’s climate and clean energy goals. And time is not on our side - the EPA is only accepting comments on this draft until August 8. Take action now, before the August 8 comment deadline. Enter your contact info on the right and we'll pre-populate a simple comment addressed to the right people at the EPA. Add to it from the talking points below, which we'll re-post on the comment writing page.

The new rules are complicated, and the path to get here has been long and winding. But the new rules are a big step in the right direction. But the EPA’s initial draft has left three big loopholes in the current draft rule, which our comments will help the EPA to fix:

1. Too few power plants are covered by the new rules. The EPA’s draft plan covers less than half of gas-fired power plants, which tend to be smaller and don’t always turn on to produce power. Those smaller, more polluting power plants are also more likely to be located in or near black, brown, and indigenous environmental justice communities - meaning pollution will be shifted, but not eliminated, and shifted to those who can least bear the burden of added pollution. EPA can close this loophole by lowering the standard for how much electricity you have to produce to be covered by the emissions rules from 300MW to 100MW.

2. The rules take too long to require emissions reductions. President Biden promised to cut global warming pollution overall in half by 2030, and to eliminate all global warming pollution from the electric sector by 2035. But the EPA’s rules don’t even take effect until 2030, and allow power plants to phase in improvements until 2040 in some cases. The EPA can close this loophole by requiring all power plants to comply with the new rule by no later than 2030, and by finalizing this rule by 2024, so they have plenty of time to do so.

3. The rules allow, and encourage, too many false solutions. Because the EPA didn’t want to tell power companies what fuel to burn (or not to burn), they allowed lots of crazy and impractical ideas to be submitted as “complying” with the emissions reduction goals. Things like mixing Hydrogen with Methane gas to make it cleaner, or capturing carbon from the smokestack and pumping it back into the ground. Most of these have never been tried, and none of them have worked as well, or as cheap, as just switching to solar, wind and renewable energy. Some of them, like carbon capture and sequestration, may actually increase other kinds of air pollution (like smog and ammonia) that are deadly.The EPA can fix this loophole by removing the exemptions and special benefits for Hydrogen and carbon capture, and by requiring new technologies that are installed to go through a rigorous community review process that includes community benefit agreements - so that anyone who lives next door to one of these experimental power plant solutions has the chance to consider all the costs, and get the maximum benefits.