US to Fall Short on Paris Agreement Without the Clean Power Plan, Study Suggests

A new study revealed that the United States may not be able to keep its end of the bargain in the Paris Agreement. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that U.S. will most likely to fall short in achieving its pledge in the Paris Agreement if the Clean Power Plan was not put into place.

"They said we're going to make a 26-to-28 percent reduction, and here are the different ways we're going to do that," explained lead author Jeffrey Greenblatt of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in a report from Washington Post. "We're going to pass the Clean Power Plan, improve the efficiency of heavy duty trucks...We just looked at each of those policies, and did the best we could to look at what the impact of any of them would be."

According to the calculations of Greenblatt and his colleagues, U.S. needs to cut down its annual emission to between 4.553 billion and 5.478 billion tons in order to meet its goal.

The Clean Power Plan was proposed by the outgoing President Barack Obama, together with the Environmental Protection Agency, last year. EPA considered that Clean Power Plan as a historic and important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants that takes real action on climate change.

However, the Clean Power Plan may face a potentially lengthy court challenge from 28 states and numerous companies and industries. Additionally, the future of the Clean Power Plan also lies to the result of the presidential elections. Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton has promise to continue the efforts of Obama, while Republican candidate Donald Trump would likely to shrug off climate issues and repeal the Clean Power Plan.

President Obama formerly entered the U.S. into the Paris Agreement earlier this month. Under the agreement, countries pledge to reduce their emissions 26 to 28 percent below the level where they were in the year 2005 by the year 2025.