Kevin Dayaratna, PhD, The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Statistician and Research Programmer, testified before the House Subcommittees on Energy and Environment regarding the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan on Wednesday.
Dayaratna testified that his research, based on a variety of simulations performed with the Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling Simulations, showed that the effects of these regulations would “hav[e] negligible environmental benefits…and a significant impact on the economy.”
Some of these effects include:
- A steep decline in employment of over 200,000 jobs by 2025, accompanied by lower gross domestic product;
- A loss of income for the average family of four of over $1,300 a year from 2020 to 2025; and
- An increase in electricity prices that would require families to spend a larger percentage of their (reduced) income on electricity.
Dayaratna also pointed out that even if the United States stopped all carbon emissions (an impossibility since we create carbon dioxide by exhaling), global temperatures would change by less than – 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The final ruling of the Clean Power Plan is expected this summer. A complete transcript of Dr. Dayaratna’s testimony is available here.
Kirby Lawrence is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.
