EPA Agenda

Oil & Gas Sector Cites Global Markets As Reason To Retain GHG Reporting

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is highlighting global energy markets as a reason to maintain some level of EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting requirements, a pitch that supplements separate industry concerns that scuttling the program could compromise the ability to claim federal tax credits for carbon storage and clean hydrogen production. “Maintaining credible reporting is essential to sustaining U.S. competitiveness and ensuring that U.S. [liquefied natural gas (LNG)] -- already among the lowest-emissions options available -- remains a cornerstone of global...

CCS Supporters Say Federal ‘Mixed Signals’ Could Restrict Development

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) proponents are expressing ongoing frustration that the Trump administration’s “mixed” support for CCS projects, as well as its broad disavowal of climate mitigation efforts, threatens to restrict development of the technology. The U.S. is seeing “some uncertainty and mixed signals [that] could curtail CCS deployment,” the Global CCS Institute says in its Oct. 9 annual CCS status report . Even so, the report broadly argues that CCS advancement is “staying the course” globally. Progress includes...

Appliance Makers Criticize Eased HFC Limits, Highlighting Industry Split

A key group representing appliance manufacturers is criticizing the Trump EPA’s proposal to ease various Biden-era end-use restrictions for climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons, arguing compliance deadline extensions for the grocery and other sectors would make it hard for manufacturers to plan their products and ultimately aid foreign industry. The EPA proposal “would disrupt multi-year planning and investment by U.S. manufacturers,” argues Samantha Slater, vice president of government affairs with the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) that represents companies that make equipment...

Environmentalists Say EPA Lacks Basis For Oil & Gas Methane Rule Delay

Environmental groups are attacking EPA’s rule extending methane and other emissions compliance deadlines for the oil and gas sector, claiming the agency has offered no evidence for the need to extend the deadlines, even as the measure is already being challenged in court. The arguments supplement environmentalists’ litigation claims that the agency lacked a basis for claiming a “good cause” exemption from public comment procedures when it issued the deadline extensions as an interim final rule (IFR). The measure is...

Former EPA Chiefs Charge GHG Risk Reversal Violates Agency Mission, Law

Three former EPA administrators serving under both Republican and Democratic administrations are urging the agency not to finalize its proposal to rescind its landmark greenhouse gas endangerment finding that underpins numerous GHG standards. The trio of former administrators -- Republicans William Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman, and Democrat Gina McCarthy -- argue the proposal conflicts with EPA’s “clear” legal obligations, as well as established science and EPA’s mission. “The harms caused by greenhouse gas pollution are severe, urgent, and growing,...

Environmentalists Press EPA To Disclose AI Use In Vehicle, GHG Rollbacks

Environmentalists are pressing for a “detailed disclosure” by EPA of any use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its rulemaking to undo its greenhouse gas endangerment finding and related vehicle standards, arguing that failure to do so violates procedural requirements and removes safeguards against error. Their call, as part of broader comments to the agency on its GHG repeal proposal, signals concern with a general EPA statement on the use of AI in rulemakings that the agency quietly posted to its...

Groups Say EPA Ignores Trillions In Harm From Ending Vehicle GHG Limits

Environmental and other groups are floating new analyses claiming that EPA’s proposed repeal of Biden-era vehicle greenhouse gas standards for vehicles ignores trillions of dollars of harms the plan would cause, part of an effort to make the case that EPA is acting arbitrarily in moving to scuttle its vehicle GHG program. The analyses are included in broader comments to the agency that claim EPA’s draft cost-benefit analysis for its plan is flawed for reasons including that it ignores the...

CCS Sector Fears End Of EPA’s GHG Reporting Rule Could Harm Permitting

The carbon capture and storage (CCS) sector is pushing back against EPA’s proposal to scuttle greenhouse gas reporting requirements, warning that including CCS-related reporting in its plan would undercut current and planned investments in such efforts and potentially also delay permitting of underground injection wells by EPA or states. During an Oct. 1 public hearing, critics also warned that EPA’s proposed repeal of its GHG reporting rule for nearly all sectors could force industry into other disparate reporting regimes, with...

EPA Floats HFC End-Use Flexibilities, Aligning With Near-Term Industry Asks

EPA is proposing to provide relief to food retailers, semiconductor manufacturers and others that are required to replace climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons with safer alternatives, issuing a plan that delays compliance deadlines and raises regulatory thresholds but stops short of adopting some of the longer-term exemptions industry sought. EPA Sept. 30 issued a proposal that seeks to extend a host of compliance deadlines, allowing companies in subsectors including residential air conditioning, retail food refrigeration, cold storage warehouses, and semiconductor manufacturing to use...

Court Declines To Rehear Firm’s Nondelegation Challenge To HFC Law

The D.C. Circuit is denying a request from a manufacturer of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to reconsider its claim that Congress illegally delegated authority to EPA in a 2020 law governing the climate-warming chemicals, scuttling chances that the court might reverse a prior panel ruling against the company. In a pair of orders issued Sept. 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected requests from RMS of Georgia, also known as Choice Refrigerants, to rehear a panel...

EEI Warns EPA About Adverse Effects Of Reversing GHG Risk Finding

Investor-owned utilities are cautioning EPA about the potential fallout from removing the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and linked vehicle emissions standards -- arguing federal GHG standards play an important role in displacing federal common law suits and providing the regulatory certainty required to build new gas plants. The power sector is not regulated directly by EPA’s proposed rule, which seeks to rescind the agency’s threshold risk finding and repeal vehicle GHG standards. EPA is separately promulgating a rule that would...

Truck Makers Urge ‘Major Questions’ Attack On Some Vehicle GHG Limits

Truck and engine makers are pressing EPA to rely on the major questions doctrine, rather than scuttling its underlying greenhouse gas endangerment finding, to undo “Phase 3” truck greenhouse gas standards, citing fears that a legal strategy of relying on the GHG finding gambit is too risky to provide needed regulatory relief. The suggestion in Sept. 22 formal comments highlights broader industry fears in both the truck and auto sectors that EPA’s push to rollback vehicle GHG limits in tandem...

Legal Risks Seen Growing As EPA Eyes Quick Repeal Of GHG Risk Finding

EPA’s rapid schedule for finalizing its greenhouse gas endangerment finding rescission could exacerbate the effort’s legal vulnerability, observers say, potentially further imperiling the sweeping move to deregulate GHGs that sources have already characterized as a high-risk venture. “I think some errors due to the schedule are inevitable,” a former EPA official tells Climate Extra . “The issue is whether they will be fatal or not. We can’t know that till we see the final product.” Questions about the impact of...

EPA Urges Court To Preserve Oil And Gas Methane Compliance Delay

EPA is resisting environmentalists’ call for a court to immediately vacate the agency’s interim final rule delaying compliance requirements for oil and gas sector methane and other emissions, claiming it “lawfully invoked” a good-cause public comment exemption and that the groups have failed to justify their “extraordinary request.” EPA’s stance laid out in a Sept. 25 opposition motion filed in Environmental Defense Fund, et al. v. EPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...

GOP AGs Offer Path To Scrap Mass. But Doubt Need Given GHG Risk Repeal

Over two dozen GOP attorneys general are offering a path for the Supreme Court to scrap its 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling ratifying EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, though they claim this is not necessary for EPA’s proposed GHG finding repeal because the plan is consistent with the “best read” of the Clean Air Act CAA). “[L]egal developments since Massachusetts have shown that GHGs like carbon dioxide are not ‘air pollutants’ under [Clean Air Act section] 302(g),”...

Democratic States Warn EPA’s GHG Risk Plan Flouts High Court Precedent

A coalition of Democratic cities and states led by Massachusetts and California is blasting EPA’s proposed recission of its greenhouse gas endangerment finding, arguing EPA’s justification is foreclosed by the Supreme Court, disregards “overwhelming” science and is “misguided” in seeking input on ways to ensure continued preemption of state vehicle GHG rules. The 225-page arguments are spelled out in Sept. 22 comments filed in response to EPA’s proposal to withdraw its 2009 endangerment finding that forms the basis for the...

State Coalition Charges EPA Lacks Authority To Scrap Vehicle GHG Limits

A California-led coalition of Democratic states and cities is charging that EPA’s plan to scrap all vehicle greenhouse standards ignores states’ reliance interests, exceeds limited agency authority to “revise” the standards, and cannot rely on the agency’s plan to scuttle its GHG risk finding that would be “ineffective” in undoing the basis for the standards. In Sept. 22 comments , the coalition cites $1.2 trillion in avoided climate harms under the current federal GHG program over the next three decades,...

EPA GHG Reporting Rollback Could Drive Multiple State, Other Programs

EPA’s proposal to virtually eliminate its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) is sparking warnings that such a step would create new pressures for multiple differing GHG reporting requirements, including at the state level, alongside new difficulties in asserting environmental performance in domestic or foreign markets. Those fears supplement prior concerns that ending EPA’s program would complicate industry’s ability to claim tax credits for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and clean hydrogen production. EPA’s proposal is also sparking claims by the...

Automakers Seek ‘Backstop’ Vehicle GHG Standards As Regulatory Hedge

The main auto sector trade group is calling on the EPA to adopt revised vehicle greenhouse gas standards as an “alternative or backstop” to the agency’s proposal to scrap its greenhouse gas endangerment finding and related vehicle GHG limits, calling such a plan “critical if motor vehicle GHG standards are retained or reinstated in some way.” The pitch in Sept. 22 comments from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation builds on the sector’s recent push for interim relief from the standards...

NRDC Makes Late Bid To Extend GHG Comment Period, Citing DOE Report

Environmentalists are making an 11th-hour request to extend the comment deadline for EPA’s sweeping proposal to rescind its greenhouse gas endangerment finding, arguing that mounting substantive and procedural concerns regarding the Department of Energy (DOE) report the agency is using to downplay greenhouse gas risks justify such a request. “In its haste to push through rollbacks of federal climate regulations, EPA has carried out an extremely rushed and slipshod rulemaking process,” the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) writes in a...

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