Clean Power Plan offers chance to right past injustices, advocates say

Advocates say a little-known provision of the Clean Power Plan could become a powerful tool to advance environmental justice. TheClean Energy Incentive Program is aimed at “removing barriers to investment in energy efficiency and solar measures in low‐income communities," plus sparking "zero-emitting" renewable energy development, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency describes it.  At a hearing in Chicago, people from across the country called on the agency to use the relatively modest program to help atone for a long history of disproportionate impacts of fossil fuels on low-income, black, Latino, Appalachian and Native American residents. The CEIP essentially creates a pool of carbon emissions allowances and Emissions Rate Credits that could be awarded to developers of renewable energy or energy efficiency programs, then sold on the market. The credits/allowances are considered to be equivalent to 300 short tons of carbon dioxide nationwide.