Comment on Clean Power Plan

Commenting on the publication today of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “The announcement is the latest indication that the world has changed profoundly since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

"Then, the US and China, the world’s top two carbon emitters, both resisted a global agreement on climate change; and now they’re both accelerating their own transitions to a low-carbon economy, as the Clean Power plan and other announcements show.

“President Obama’s opponents are absolutely right to call it a ‘war on coal' and that’s exactly what it has to be, given the science indicating that about 80 percent of known coal reserves have to be left in the ground if climate change is to be kept within manageable bounds."