President Obama’s global warming strategy will cut the country’s climate change-inducing greenhouse emissions significantly – but at some cost. That’s the upshot of a new Energy Information Administration analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark Clean Power Plan, which, once finalized, will be at the core of the president’s strategy to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide output.

The report underscores a fundamental truth about the U.S. stance on global warming: The nation’s plan has merit, but it is a second-best policy that the country is stuck with because Congress is too cowardly or unwise to endorse a better one.

The Clean Power Plan will set emissions targets for every state’s power sector, and the EIA reckons that they will be effective. The sector’s carbon dioxide emissions will drop to 34 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The country will see a broad move away from coal, the biggest environmental villain in the electricity industry. Utilities will replace coal with cleaner burning natural gas, especially in early years, and carbon-free renewables, which will become increasingly prominent in later years. A band of states in the South will see a more persistent increase in electricity prices.

These figures don’t necessarily translate into higher energy bills. States will invest in efficiency programs that reduce energy use, and people will waste less electricity, too. The bottom line, the EIA finds, is that electricity bills will be slightly lower by 2040 than they would have been otherwise.