Whats Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs

The paper explores the use of section 111 of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants and industrial facilities, which account for half of the country's total emissions. It highlights the flexibility available to states to implement market-based emissions-trading mechanisms rather than traditional source-specific limitations. However, it notes specific design challenges for cap-and-trade programs under federal guidelines, such as restrictions on offsets and uncertainties regarding trading between different source categories.

• Power plants and industrial facilities are responsible for 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, making them critical targets for emission reduction efforts.
• Section 111 of the Clean Air Act provides the EPA and states with significant flexibility in how they regulate existing power plants and industrial facilities, allowing for a variety of policy mechanisms including cap-and-trade instead of traditional emissions rate limitations.
• While twenty-three states have designed or implemented market-based emissions-trading mechanisms, integrating these regional cap-and-trade designs with section 111 presents specific legal and technical challenges: offsets cannot be used for federal minimum reductions, trading between different source categories depends on EPA interpretation, and borrowing or safety valve mechanisms are problematic if they jeopardize federal time frames for minimum reductions.
• The EPA established a timeline for regulating power plants and refineries under section 111, with draft performance standards for new and modified power plants and draft mandatory guidelines for states expected by July 26, 2011, and final rules for power plants in May 2012 and refineries in November 2012.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Whats Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs. https://www.wri.org/research/whats-ahead-power-plants-industry-using-clean-air-act-reduce-ghgs-building-regional

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Whats Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/whats-ahead-power-plants-industry-using-clean-air-act-reduce-ghgs-building-regional.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Whats Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs |url=https://www.wri.org/research/whats-ahead-power-plants-industry-using-clean-air-act-reduce-ghgs-building-regional |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendwhats, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Whats Ahead for Power Plants \& Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/whats-ahead-power-plants-industry-using-clean-air-act-reduce-ghgs-building-regional}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }