Kilmartin asks Trump to support Clean Power Plan

R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin is urging President-elect Donald J. Trump to defend the Clean Power Plan.  / PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin is urging President-elect Donald J. Trump to defend the Clean Power Plan. / PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s top attorney on Friday joined several others from across the country in urging President-elect Donald J. Trump to defend the Clean Power Plan, a federal rule that limits emissions produced by power plants.

The letter, signed by R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin and 18 other lawyers and politicians from throughout the country, calls on Trump to defend the rule, implemented under President Barack H. Obama. The rule is designed to limit how much carbon power plants are allowed to release into the atmosphere.

“Rhode Island is seeing firsthand the significant human and economic costs caused by unchecked carbon pollution,” said Kilmartin in prepared remarks. “Rising sea levels are eroding our shorelines and causing more severe and frequent coastal flooding, warmer ocean temperatures are changing the fish species in our local waters, and a warmer climate is causing more severe weather events, from heat waves and cold spells to droughts and record-setting snowfall.”

The letter, also signed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrel, comes in response to a Dec. 14 letter from West Virginia’s attorney general and 23 others urging the incoming administration and U.S. Congress to undo the Clean Power Plan, calling it unconstitutional and encroaching on policies that traditionally lie with the states. Coal-fired electric power plants accounted for 94 percent of West Virginia’s net electricity generation in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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“The rule directly intrudes on each state’s traditional prerogative over its mix of electricity generation,” wrote West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

The Clean Power Plan aims to eliminate 870 million tons of greenhouse gases by 2030. Kilmartin and others argue the rule is beneficial to states because it combats the “grave threats that carbon pollution poses to our residents, economies, infrastructure and natural resources.”

“The Clean Power Plan builds on successful strategies that states, local governments and the power sector have used to cost effectively cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, while at the same time creating jobs and growing our economies. It establishes a nationwide framework to achieve substantial reductions of carbon-dioxide emissions while providing states and power plants flexibility to decide how best to achieve these reductions,” according to the letter.

Trump will be sworn into office on Jan. 20, and he has nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which doesn’t bode well for Kilmartin and company. Pruitt, a climate change denialist, was part of a coalition of state attorneys general to sue the EPA over the Clean Power Plan.

Oklahoma in 2014 was the nation’s fifth largest producer of crude oil, excluding federal offshore areas, and also the fourth largest producer of wind energy, which provided almost 17 percent of the state’s net generation, according to the EIA.

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