The US Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule limiting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants will reduce air pollution and improve human health. A new study issued in early May 2015 in the journal Nature Climate Change and led by researchers at Syracuse and Harvard Universities reveals that the new carbon emissions standards proposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2014 for coal-fired power plants in the United States would considerably improve human health and could prevent more than 3,000 premature deaths per year. The study used modelling to predict the impacts of new national carbon standards for power plants on human health, and calculated three different outcomes based on data from the Census Bureau and maps of more than 2,400 fossil-fuel power plants across the nation. The researchers began about a year before the EPA proposed its Clean Power Plan, but it resulted that the model with the biggest health benefit was very similar to the rule proposed by EPA, which would require states to autonomously establish reductions in carbon emissions for the plants, and would also involve improvements in the energy efficiency of air-conditioners, refrigerators, power grids etc. According to the research, the rule would have only indirect health benefits; in fact, carbon emissions are not directly linked to health threats, but emissions coming from coal-fired power plants include also other pollutants, such as soot and ozone, which on the contrary have a direct connection with illnesses like asthma and lung diseases. The US President Barack Obama is expected to disclose during the summer a final set of climate change regulations to limit carbon emissions. The new regulatory framework – as proposed in draft from last year by the EPA – would entail a 30% cut in carbon emissions coming from power plants compared to 2005 levels by 2030, and is likely to focus primarily on coal-fired power plants, which are the country’s main source of carbon emissions. The rule would also require every state to submit its plan to target a cleaner energy system. The gLAWcal Team LIBEAC project Wednesday, 6 May 2015 (Source: New York Times) This news has been realized by gLAWcal—Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development in collaboration with the University Institute of European Studies (IUSE) in Turin, Italy and the University of Piemonte Orientale, Novara, Italy which are both beneficiaries of the European Union Research Executive Agency IRSES Project “Liberalism in Between Europe And China” (LIBEAC) coordinated by Aix-Marseille University (CEPERC). This work has been realized in the framework of Workpackages 4, coordinated by University Institute of European Studies (IUSE) in Turin, Italy.