The federal government should buy coal plants, shut them down and pay to retrain their employees
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Stephen L. Kass, a lawyer in New York, is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and is chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Task Force on Legal Issues of Climate Adaptation.
The Supreme Court’s decision in February to stay President Obama’s Clean Power Plan may lead to a protracted legal battle over aging, unprofitable and environmentally unsound coal plants. But instead of litigating our way out of the problem, there is a simpler solution: The federal government could buy the plants and close them.
The court’s move threatens to not only derail the president’s initiative to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at U.S. coal-fired power plants but also unravel the progress that the United States and 195 other nations made on climate change in Paris in December. If the courts invalidate or delay the Clean Power Plan, some climate activists may turn to a Plan B that would encourage enlightened business leaders and states with large coal plants to support a voluntary version of the Clean Power Plan. But such an effort would be even less effective than the complex and overly cautious Obama plan, which at best would reduce power-plant emissions by 15 percent more than what is expected without the Clean Power Plan and would take 15 years to do that — not nearly enough to meet U.S. commitments under the Paris agreement.
There is another alternative — which I’ll call Plan A — that would avoid the considerable litigation risks of the Clean Power Plan and achieve more quickly and with greater certainty a reduction in emissions at least equal to those of the Clean Power initiative. Under Plan A, the federal government would buy or, if necessary, seize under eminent domain all existing U.S. coal plants and close them over 10 years. Such a use of federal authority is well-established and would not be subject to serious legal challenge. (Plant owners could dispute the amount of compensation offered but not the public purpose of federal action intended to protect the environment.) Plan A would include fair, market-based compensation for coal-plant shareholders and generous severance, relocation and job-training programs for employees, who should not be asked to bear the burdens of emissions reductions. Once authorized by Congress, Plan A could be carried out before the legality of the Clean Power Plan was finally adjudicated and long before it could be implemented. Moreover, since Plan A would set a firm deadline for coal plants to close, it would provide a strong incentive for wind, solar and other renewables to replace the lost coal capacity at rates that are already competitive with coal.
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