Arizona will ask federal regulators next week to rethink their June proposal that calls for the state to cut carbon emissions from power plants in half over the next 15 years.
Cronkite News reports officials with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality have scheduled a conference call with their counterparts in the Environmental Protection Agency in which they hope to show that EPA did not take the state’s unique energy demands into account when coming up with the reduction goal.
“The good news for us is that the EPA has expressed a willingness to listen to our concerns,” said Eric Massey, director of the air quality division at ADEQ.
The EPA in June unveiled its Clean Power Plan, which set different carbon-emission reduction goals for states based on individual states’ abilities to shift away from coal and toward natural gas for power generation, among other changes.
Arizona was given one of the most ambitious goals in the country, with a target of a 52 percent reduction in carbon intensity by 2030, compared with 2012 levels.
Related: Kinder Morgan to Consolidate Empire/The Wall Street Journal
