The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is asking residents to help develop a plan to cut carbon pollution in the state.
The EPA finalized the Clean Power Plan on Aug. 3. It’s the first set of national standards to limit carbon emissions from power plants, the largest source of emissions in the U.S.
The plan sets to reduce 2005 emission levels nationally by 32 percent by 2030.
Each state will have to write an implementation plan with. The first listening session in Allegheny County is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 21 on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus.
“We’re holding these listening sessions because we want to hear as much as we can from as many people as we can in Pennsylvania what they think of how we should go about putting together a plan to manage Pennsylvania’s carbon emissions,” said Neil Shader, press secretary for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Seventeen Pennsylvania counties do not meet the EPA’s current ozone limit. The EPA plans to lower that limit, which could mean more counties would exceed the limit.
Pennsylvanians have to decide how the state will track carbon emissions. Shader said that could be either by the rate at which the carbon emissions go into the air per hour or by the overall weight and volume of emissions going into the air annually.
“Depending on which one of those we choose, there will be different ways to go about cutting down on them and different ways for power plants to reduce their emissions and how we count them and things like that,” he said.
Online comments for the DEP can be left at http://www.ahs.dep.pa.gov/eComment/. A schedule of sessions can be found here.. To register to speak at a session call 717-787-8727.
