Air

Tracking the latest agency and congressional debates over rules to cut emissions of traditional pollutants, and a broad range of novel EPA policies including the agency's shift to a "multipollutant" regulatory approach for individual sectors.

Topic Subtitle
Tracking the latest agency and congressional debates over rules to cut emissions of traditional pollutants, and a broad range of novel EPA policies including the agency's shift to a "multipollutant" regulatory approach for individual sectors.

GOP States Urge Justices To Send SIP Denial Suits To Regional Courts

A coalition of 17 mainly GOP-led states is asking the Supreme Court to back Utah and Oklahoma’s argument that regional appeals courts must hear challenges to EPA denials of states’ plans for curbing interstate ozone, escalating a legal fight with broad implications for Clean Air Act litigation over state implementation plans (SIPs) in general. The states, led by Alabama, filed a May 1 amicus brief in Oklahoma, et al. v. EPA, et al , where petitioners are hoping to...

Regan Says FY25 Request Seeks To Boost ‘Capacity’ For Sector-Based Rules

EPA Administrator Michael Regan told House appropriators that the agency’s fiscal year 2025 budget request for significantly higher staffing levels would help build “capacity” to write future rulemaking packages for cement and other manufacturing sectors similar to its recent issuance of four major rules for the power-generating sector. His comments during an April 30 House Appropriations subcommittee hearing come as Republicans renewed concerns that the power plant rules would effectively force a shift away from coal-fired power plants. In response...

EPA poised to tighten copper smelter air rule

EPA is preparing to issue a final rule tightening air toxics limits for primary copper smelters, after the regulation cleared White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) interagency review April 26, paving the way for Administrator Michael Regan to sign the rule that will likely add limits for mercury and other harmful air pollutants. EPA is under a judicial deadline to issue the final rule by May 2, imposed in litigation brought by environmentalists to force tougher regulation in...

Ethanol Groups Challenge Fuel Economy Formula In EPA’s Auto Rule

Several ethanol groups are challenging EPA’s update to test-fuel requirements, adopted alongside the agency’s final passenger vehicle emissions rulemaking, claiming that a revised fuel economy calculation to account for the test fuel unlawfully boosts the stringency of fuel economy standards. The April 26 petition for review , Texas Corn Producers et al., v. Michael Regan , filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, is separate from broader litigation in the D.C. Circuit that Republican-led states are...

CEQ Issues Tougher NEPA Rule While Downplaying Fears On Permit Delays

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has finalized its controversial Phase 2 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rule strengthening review and mitigation requirements while downplaying fears that the measure will slow permitting for a range of energy, transportation and other projects. “Thanks to President [Joe] Biden’s leadership, the time to complete the most extensive form of environmental review is already coming down: agencies are completing a higher proportion of environmental impact statements (EIS) in under two years than...

Final Rule

Fact Sheet


Rebutting Critics, EPA Touts ‘Traditional’ Focus In Power Plant GHG Rule

EPA is arguing its just-released power plant greenhouse gas standards comply with the Supreme Court’s direction in West Virginia v. EPA to focus on “traditional” pollution controls, though critics say the rule’s reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) effectively makes it a re-run of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) that the high court struck down in 2022. The debate about the rule’s adherence to the court’s West Virginia decision -- which barred standards based on shifting...

Judges Offer No Clues On Biogas Producers’ Challenge To EPA’s RFS Rule

Federal appellate judges are weighing arguments by biogas producers that EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) rule setting biofuel volumes for 2023-2025 unlawfully regulates the sector for the first time but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit offered no signs at oral argument which way it would rule. At argument April 25 in Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas v. EPA , Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, both Democratic appointees, pressed biogas...

EPA Science Advisors Urge NAAQS Process Revision, Eye New Pollutants

EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) is moving to adopt a recommendation for the agency to return to a more comprehensive process to review federal air standards that would weigh wider policy options and provide more opportunities for revision of key documents, while also calling for EPA to consider limits for new pollutants. At an April 25 meeting, members of the seven-member panel considered a draft letter crafted by committee Chair Elizabeth Sheppard, a University of Washington environmental professor,...

Power Sector Rules Bring ‘Modest And Manageable’ Grid Effects, EPA Says

Compliance with EPA’s just-completed power plant greenhouse gas requirements and several other new rules for the sector will impose relatively few risks to adequate power supply, the agency says in new analysis, offering a rebuttal to attacks from industry and their allies that the rules will spark major reliability problems. Even though some utilities may run their fossil fuel-fired plants less often or shutter them altogether rather than install carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to comply with the GHG...

TSD On GHG Rule’s Resource Effects

TSD On Power Plant Rules’ Resource Effects


MATS Update Tightens Air Toxics, Mercury Limits In Line With Proposal

EPA’s final rule updating mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) for power plants hews closely to the proposed version, cutting a mercury limit for plants using lignite coal to that applicable to other coal plants, and tightening a limit for particulate matter (PM) as a “surrogate” for other metals by two-thirds, with officials projecting no plant closures from the rule. The rule , released April 25 as part of a broader package of EPA measures for power plants, adopts EPA’s...

EPA defends wildfire exception allowing Detroit to attain ozone standard

EPA is strongly defending its decision to apply its exceptional event policy in Detroit and allow the city to meet the 2015 national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for ozone by disregarding exceedances recorded over two days in June of 2022 which the state said was due to wildfire smoke from Canada. In an April 23 brief in Sierra Club v. EPA, et al., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the agency says it “reasonably...

EPA Denial Of Turbine Air Toxics Petition ‘With Prejudice’ Bars Repeat Effort

EPA’s recent decision to deny “with prejudice” a longstanding industry petition to “delist” stationary combustion turbines as a regulated source of air toxics under the Clean Air Act appears to foreclose any near-term industry effort to again push for such a step, raising the bar for future deregulatory efforts in the sector and potentially setting a precedent for other petition responses. In its April 16 denial of the petition, the agency says it is “denying the petition with prejudice and...

EPA Defends ‘Forward-Looking’ Power Plant GHG Standards Based On CCS

EPA in just-finalized power plant greenhouse gas standards is offering a broad defense of its key finding that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an “adequately demonstrated” technology that can serve as the basis for strict standards in the rule, outlining the agency’s stance in one of the most prominent issues that will be raised in litigation. Critically, EPA asserts that “the case law interpreting section 111 [of the Clean Air Act] has also recognized that the [rule’s standard-setting formula]...

EPA Releases Regulatory Text Of Four Power Plant Standards

EPA has posted regulatory text for its four just-finalized power plant air, climate, water, and waste standards, outlining detailed new requirements for existing coal plants and newly constructed natural gas-fired facilities under several statutes. Agency officials have argued the sector will easily be able to implement those mandates, in part because the agency has coordinated their various requirements and added new provisions to preserve grid reliability. White House officials are also stressing several actions by other agencies to ease deployment...

Federal STB Raises Legal Doubts Over EPA Waiver For CARB Locomotive Rule

The federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) is raising legal doubts about whether EPA should waive Clean Air Act (CAA) preemption to allow California’s air board to implement a novel rule aimed at cutting pollution from existing locomotives, saying the policy may be preempted by the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995 (ICCTA). “To the extent authorization under” section 209(e)(2) of the CAA “would give the Regulation or parts of it the ‘force and effect of federal law,’ EPA should...

Biden Officials Tout Power Sector’s Ability To Meet Suite Of New EPA Rules

Biden administration officials are mounting an early defense of EPA’s four just-finalized air, climate, water, and waste standards for power plants, saying the sector will easily be able to implement them in part because the agency has coordinated their various requirements and added new provisions to preserve grid reliability. The suite of standards “will allow for the utilities to look at a consolidated planning process to meet the environmental objectives of each of these separate actions,” a senior administration official...

D.C. Circuit Pauses ‘Good Neighbor’ SIP Suit Pending High Court Ruling

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has paused litigation brought by states and industry against the agency’s disapproval of many states’ plans to curb interstate ozone pollution, pending a decision by the Supreme Court on whether to hear challenges to a regional court’s decision to transfer litigation to the D.C. court. In an April 24 order , the D.C. Circuit holds litigation in State of Utah, et al. v. EPA, et al. in abeyance...

Lung Association Finds Worsening Wildfire Impacts On Western Air Quality

The American Lung Association (ALA) in its annual “state of the air” report identifies a worsening trend of wildfire-driven fine particulate matter (PM2.5) across western states, increasing a disparity between poor air quality in the western part of the country and elsewhere, even as overall progress toward reducing ozone levels continues. ALA’s findings , released April 24, also confirm that breaches of EPA’s daily national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for PM2.5 are increasing as major wildfire events increase, with...

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