IESET.
Policies·us_clean_power_plan_2015

Clean Power Plan — EPA carbon regulation of existing power plants

USA·2015 – 2019·enacted 2015-08-03·Democratic WH via EPA rulemakingcandidate
movesenvironmental stringency↑energy supply security↓

What the policy did

EPA final rule 3 Aug 2015 under Clean Air Act §111(d) setting CO2 emission guidelines for existing fossil-fuel power plants, aiming 32% reduction below 2005 by 2030 via state plans. SCOTUS stayed implementation 9 Feb 2016 pending DC Circuit review. Trump EPA repealed + replaced with Affordable Clean Energy Rule Jun 2019; ACE itself struck down by DC Circuit Jan 2021. Biden EPA proposed new rule 2023. Never binding in effect.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
↑
environmental stringency
regulatory.environmental_stringency
Environmental regulation stringency — emissions caps, standards, phase-out mandates, carbon pricing, renewable portfolio standards.
increased · moderate
more stringent environmental rules
Intended GHG cap on existing power sector; never implemented.
unintended / side-effect
↓
energy supply security
regulatory.energy_supply_security
Policy posture toward energy supply security — domestic production capacity, import diversification, strategic reserves, nuclear stance, fossil-fuel mix discipline.
decreased · weak · unintended
lower supply-security posture (single-supplier dependence, early phase-outs)
Coal-retirement accelerated planning; gas + renewables substitution pathway.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

German industrial gross value added, manufacturing output, and real household income diverged materially from a synthetic-Germany donor- pool counterfactual over 2018-2025, and a variance decomposition across candidate channels attributes the majority of the divergence to regulatory-channel factors (Environmental Policy Stringency index increase post-2017, nuclear-phase-out schedule, single-supplier Russian gas dependency lock-in, industrial emission and reporting rules) rather than to fiscal-channel factors (general government consumption and tax burden were broadly stable across the Merkel late-term and Scholz years, with the debt brake in effect until 2023).
germany_decline_2018_2025_regulatory_not_fiscalinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
partial — DEU below synthetic by -0.251 cumulative over 2018-2022 (sign correct), but magnitude or placebo p=0.36363636363636365 below pre-registered thresholds…
partial
Countries with aggressive green-transition regulatory stringency layered on top of gas-indexed wholesale electricity markets and premature phase-out of firm-dispatchable generation (Germany, UK, Belgium, Netherlands) have experienced materially higher industrial electricity prices 2015-2023 than comparable economies with more measured transition paths (France's nuclear retention, Nordic hydro, USA's shale-gas-backed grid).
green_transition_cost_trajectory_electricity_pricesinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'aggressive_green_transition_dummy' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Policy-driven nuclear phaseouts produce a three-order causal chain.
nuclear_phaseout_energy_cost_industry_exitinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
PARTIAL — mean_gap=+0.04357, |gap|/pre_sd=8.7, p_perm=0.25; claim direction ambiguous
partial
Germany's industrial electricity prices diverged upward from a basket of comparable industrial peers (United States, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland) after the 2011 Energiewende pivot and the gap widened further through the 2014 nuclear-phase-out milestones and the 2022 gas crisis.
german_energiewende_industrial_cost_trajectoryinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
refuted — Germany's industrial GVA gap on 2015-2020 average is +0.095 log (wrong sign for industrial-cost-penalty story), placebo p=0.4444444444444444.
refuted
Germany's manufacturing value-added share of GDP declined from approximately 22-23% in 2017 to approximately 18-19% by 2024, a historically large shift for a mature economy over seven years.
german_manufacturing_va_decline_2017_2024inferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient observations after listwise deletion (10)
run pending
Germany's 2010-2024 Energiewende-driven reduction in territorial CO2 emissions, valued at a central social-cost-of-carbon (SCC) of USD 185/tCO2 (Rennert et al.
energiewende_avoided_emissions_value_outweighs_industrial_costinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
PARTIAL — shape=panel_summary, |Δ_log|=0.119, ratio=1.13; claim direction ambiguous
partial
EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowance prices traded in a sustained €70-100/tCO2 range from late 2021 through 2024 (with a peak at €105 in February 2023), a step-change above the €5-30 range that prevailed through Phase I-III (2005-2020).
eu_ets_price_2022_2026_carbon_signal_strengthinferred
viaregulatory.environmental_stringencyregulatory.energy_supply_security
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded
run pending
Countries that legislated and executed nuclear phase-outs (Germany 2011-2023, Belgium 2003 law with 2025-2035 phase-out, Switzerland 2017 vote) experienced over 2010-2024 (a) higher industrial electricity prices, (b) higher wholesale electricity price volatility, and (c) greater reliance on fossil-fired back-up capacity for grid balancing, relative to nuclear-retaining peers (France, Finland post-2023 Olkiluoto 3, Sweden, USA).
nuclear_phaseout_grid_reliability_cost_tradeoffinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
inconclusive — Primary outcomes (industrial electricity price, wholesale day-ahead volatility, LOLE) remain data-gated. Eurostat NRG_PC_205 is present locally b…
run pending

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

Energiewende — post-Fukushima nuclear phase-out + renewable-energy acceleration
DEU·2011
match
1.5
environmental stringencyenergy supply security
Austrian Zwentendorf nuclear-plant referendum 1978
AUT·1978
match
1.4
energy supply securityenvironmental stringency
Germany Atomausstieg (nuclear phase-out 2011)
DEU·2011
match
1.4
energy supply securityenvironmental stringency
Germany Kohleausstieg (coal phase-out law, 2020)
DEU·2020
match
1.4
environmental stringencyenergy supply security
Austrian Hainburg Au hydropower project cancellation 1984
AUT·1984
match
1.3
environmental stringencyenergy supply security
Fennovoima-Rosatom nuclear-reactor decision 2014
FIN·2014
match
1.3
energy supply securityenvironmental stringency
Atomkonsens — first nuclear phase-out agreement
DEU·2000
match
1.3
environmental stringencyenergy supply security
Ireland Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021
IRL·2021
match
1.3
environmental stringencyenergy supply security

References