(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



STATEMENT: EPA’s Proposed New Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants will fail to protect EJ communities. — Tishman Environment and Design Center [1]

['Tishman Center']

Date: 2023-11

WASHINGTON (August 8, 2023) –The Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School, the Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research at Kean University, the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance (NJEJA), and the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, along with 18 environmental justice and 9 allied organizations are submitting public comments today on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s proposed carbon pollution standards for coal and new natural gas fired power plants.





Environmental justice (EJ) communities are on the frontlines of the adverse impacts of climate change and are disproportionately exposed to a wide range of polluting industries, including fossil fuel infrastructure like coal plants, natural gas plants, and pipelines. The use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) mechanisms and hydrogen co-firing in the power sector will further harm EJ communities that are already overburdened. The only real solution to climate change is the rapid and complete transition of the power sector away from all types of fossil fuels to energy efficiency and renewable energy in the form of wind and solar power. We call attention to critical EJ concerns related to the proposed rule that would hinder a reliable, just, and truly clean power section transition.





The EPA will finalize the standards in the coming months.

The following is a comment from Dr. Ana Baptista, The Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School

“Addressing climate change and decades of toxic exposure experienced by environmental justice communities means moving away from a dependence on fossil fuels and investing instead in renewable energy sources and infrastructure in communities. Supporting carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen co-firing in the power sector through massive amounts of public funding and policies like EPA’s proposed rule will perpetuate the fossil fuel industry, to the continued detriment of EJ communities. These same overburdened communities have time and again been sacrifice zones to unjust policies and infrastructure that place them on the frontlines of fossil fuel polluting structures. Environmental justice should be a priority for the EPA’s power sector rule rather than an afterthought . We urge the EPA to take seriously the environmental justice implications of this rule and consider cumulative impacts in decision-making processes related to the rule.”

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.tishmancenter.org/blog/statement-epas-proposed-new-carbon-pollution-standards-for-fossil-fuel-fired-power-plants-will-fail-to-protect-ej-communities

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.