CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Senate President and gubernatorial candidate Bill Cole (R-Mercer, 06) says Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s decision to submit a plan to comply with federal Environment Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan will be a toss-up for state lawmakers.
“It’s going to be a tough sell for the Legislature,” said Cole on Wednesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Tomblin announced Tuesday that presenting a state plan to meet federal carbon emission limits is better than an alternative plan provided by the EPA.
“If they don’t agree with it, we’ll at least have a starting point where we can talk,” Tomblin previously said.
Individual states are in charged of developing their own plans to establish emissions limits or targets that vary by state. State requests for yearlong extensions are due by mid-2016.
The state decided to seek a two year extension with the state Department of Environmental Protection that would allow for more time to create the best plan by 2018, but Cole said there’s two sides to the situation.
“If we believe that the state implementation plan that gets offered by DEP to the U.S. EPA, if that’s going to put West Virginia in a tougher position, I don’t see that one advancing,” he said.
On the other hand, Cole said if the Tomblin administration submits a plan that “gets them over the hump” of the demand in Washington D.C., then that may be something the Legislature will support.
“We just don’t need to do anything to make our own plate any worse that what Washington is making it for us now,” he said.
According to HB 2004, the Legislature will have the final review of the state’s plan before it would be submitted.
The new limits in the Clean Power Plan would reduce carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants by nearly 30 percent on average before 2030.