ACE – Memphis Flyer

Last week, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) regulation to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP). But the replacement rule will be neither affordable nor clean. The CPP would have driven significant emission reductions in the Southeast, bringing health and economic benefits.

I spent more than three years becoming the “CPP expert” at a global firm of about 450 energy consultants, and this is possibly the last chance I’ll get to use that now-obsolete knowledge, so here is some background on what’s happening — and why it matters to my fellow Tennesseans.

After the draft CPP was released, there was plenty of pontificating about how easy/hard compliance would be and how many costs/benefits would follow. I spoke at conferences, met with clients, and was asked the same question: Will the regulation happen? I even moderated a conference panel while eight mo

Justin Fox Burks

TVA’s old Allen Coal Plant

nths pregnant, not a typical sight at an energy industry event.

The final CPP rule came out in the middle of my maternity leave. My husband cared for our baby for a few days while I voraciously read through the rule documentation. My team and our clients needed my take on the rule.

The day after the 2016 election, I updated all our models to remove any carbon regulation. We knew the CPP would never go into effect. It felt like a big change, but results didn’t change much. Economics, not the CPP, was driving the model to select a future with less coal and more wind and solar.

In fact, when we look at the CPP, it seems quaint for most parts of the country. The Department of Energy’s own analysis shows the country’s emissions likely to be lower in 2030 than the CPP would have required. However, the Southeast, including Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), is not on track to reduce emissions, even at the minimal rate called for in the Clean Power Plan. The CPP would have made a big difference in the Southeast, and residents of these states will suffer greater health and economic hardships as a result of its repeal.

I am outraged that an agency tasked with protecting the American people is using a finding that CO2 endangers public health and welfare so perversely. The proposed ACE not only rolls back the CPP, but it also could lead to an increase in air pollution across our region and promises to negatively impact public health and welfare.

The ACE proposes to reduce CO2 emissions through making coal plants more efficient so they generate more electricity from each unit of coal. Sounds good, right? And a more efficient plant costs less to operate. Still sounds like a good thing. However, utilities and markets operate power plants based on the plants’ cost to generate. If coal plants cost less to operate, they will be used to generate more electricity. Therefore it is likely that coal emissions would increase under ACE.

The EPA’s analysis of ACE shows increases in coal generation. That means more smog, heavy metals, and particulate matter that lodges in our lungs and gives our kids asthma. This is really nasty stuff. The ACE rule would cause 1,400 more premature deaths per year than the CPP. Instead of changing the rule to reduce the actual number of premature deaths, the EPA is proposing to ignore those premature deaths by changing the way they are calculated.

In the ACE, the Trump EPA also promises to change a part of the Clean Air Act known as New Source Review (NSR) in the future. I don’t have enough space for details, but the change could allow coal power plants to pollute more per year.

I want to give a shout-out to all my fellow CPP experts, particularly current and former EPA employees, who put hours of thought, analysis, blood, sweat, and tears into the Clean Power Plan. I see you. I’m with you. And though the CPP is a thing of the past, the effort that went into it will make carbon policy across the U.S. better in the future.

The release of the final ACE rule felt very different from the release of the CPP. Instead of being on maternity leave, we just celebrated my son’s fourth birthday. I have moved from consulting to advocacy work. Instead of wondering how states could work together to reduce emissions, I’m worried about how the ACE rule will affect our children’s future.

Maggie Shober is director of Power Market Analytics at the Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy.

If the populations of Knoxville and Chattanooga were combined, they still wouldn’t equal the number of adults in Shelby County who experienced some form of abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction as a kid.

A new privately funded task force recently administered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) survey, and it showed that 52 percent (an estimated 361,200) of adults in Shelby County had at least one adverse childhood experience. These are categorized as things like child abuse, domestic violence, neglect, and alcoholism in the family.

For those who encountered adverse childhood experiences on a more consistent basis, the likelihood of them being unemployed, abusing drugs, having poor health, contracting sexually transmitted infections, or attempting suicide was significantly higher.

To intervene with kids who may be at risk of heading down a similar path, two Universal Parenting Places will be opened here this spring. The goal of these centers will be to aid and educate parents whose children are exhibiting negative behaviors on how to combat these issues before they progress.

“We have places for people to go once they’ve already experienced serious trauma and they’re having the symptoms, but we don’t really have a network of prevention,” said Barbara Holden Nixon, ACE task force chair. “When the normal challenges of childhood arise, there’s not a place for them to go to get help and guidance before those problems become a serious issue. We can avoid so many of the problems that we are dealing with on the back end if we deal with them on the front end and really get to the root of the issue.”

There will be two pilot sites for the Universal Parenting Places. One will be established at Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women and the other at Knowledge Quest.

The sites will provide both individual and group education sessions around children’s emotional and behavioral health. There will also be arts-related activities, such as performances by theater troupe Playback Memphis, presented at the sites. A children’s play area will be available for kids who accompany their parents.

The Universal Parenting Places will be open to all area families. Centers can be accessed on a walk-in basis or through pediatrician referrals.

Louis Goggans

The crowd at last week’s ACE Task Force public forum

Last week, a public forum on adverse childhood experiences was held at the Salvation Army Kroc Center.

The event was filled with community leaders and featured several speakers, including Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Dr. Vincent J. Felitti (co-principal investigator of the ACE study), and Robin Karr-Morse (Universal Parenting Places consultant).

The results of the ACE survey were shared during the event. Among the statistics revealed were that 20 percent of county adults experienced childhood sexual abuse; 41 percent of adults were bullied as children; and 37 percent witnessed a shooting or stabbing.  

The random survey was conducted on 1,506 adults in Shelby County through telephone interviews. Participants hailed from every zip code in the county. They were questioned about childhood living conditions and mistreatment, family dysfunction, current health status and behaviors, and other issues.

According to the survey, one out of five adults experienced two to three adverse experiences when they were kids; 12 percent of adults experienced four or more. The negative experiences were more likely to affect those who resided in the inner-city, lacked a high school education, and/or were poverty-stricken.

“There’s a lot of stigma attached to most adverse childhood experiences,” Holden Nixon said. “Most people don’t want to talk about emotional abuse. They don’t want to talk about physical abuse. They don’t want to talk about the things that have been painful in their childhood.”