Google today released a public comment criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to roll back the Clean Energy Plan, a policy of the Obama era that aims to reduce the pollution of power plants. With his comment, Google joins Apple in arguing that maintaining the policy is good business for the United States.
The Google comment, which he shared with The Verge states what he called "a strong economic case for the Clean Energy Plan." He says the plan would encourage utilities and companies like Google to keep investing in renewable energy, which Google says is becoming cheaper, both consumers and investors want, and is a good source of jobs.
Google also believes that curbing global warming "is an urgent global priority that requires a strong commitment to federal policy and strong action from the business community," the document says.
The Clean Energy Plan, which ended in 2016, requires that power plants, the largest carbon polluters in the US. UU Reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 32 percent by 2030. The EPA sets emissions targets for each state, and states could choose how to get, say, requiring power plants to operate more efficiently, changing natural gas by coal or incorporating more renewable energy into the grid, Vox explains. But the Clean Energy Plan has been linked to the courts and never came into force.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to bring it back completely, a move that Apple and now Google say is a bad decision. Apple, which Reuters says was the first company to publish a public comment condemning the repeal of the Clean Energy Plan earlier this month, argued that dismantling the policy would make the US UU Less competitive in the clean energy economy. And both Apple and Google note that the prices of renewable energy are more stable than those of fuel, which makes it easier for companies to anticipate electricity costs.
Google goes one step further by arguing that EPA must not only keep the Clean Energy Plan, but also update the emissions targets that are outdated. Renewable energy is becoming so cheap and widely available that the Clean Energy Plan could afford to establish even lower emissions targets than it already does, according to Google. "An updated clean energy plan could make an even more substantial, and still profitable, contribution to mitigating climate change," the commentary says.
The public comment period closes tomorrow, April 26, so Google's comments leaked just below the wire. Now, the EPA will have to respond to the comments before dismantling the Clean Energy Plan, a measure that will likely face more demands.
