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.

Chiding Industry, CARB Eases Truck ZEV Rule To Tackle Vehicle Shortages

California air officials are easing compliance with their embattled Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) rule to address a shortage of model year 2024 diesel trucks being offered for sale in the state, even as they are criticizing manufacturers for helping to create the problem via flawed compliance strategies. During an Oct. 24 meeting, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) unanimously approved amendments to the ACT that generally aim to ease certain compliance requirements through more flexible options and...

Landfill Operators Sue EPA Over Revised Air Emission Estimation Factors

Waste and recycling companies are suing EPA over a recent update to its “emission factors” used to estimate emissions from municipal solid waste landfills for regulatory purposes, after warning in earlier comments on a draft version that EPA’s factors are unclear, inaccurate or inflexible in their approach. EPA Aug. 15 updated its “AP-42” list of emission factors with respect to landfills. In a lawsuit filed Oct. 14 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the...

Three High Court Rejections Unlikely To Slow Petitions To Stay EPA Rules

Supreme Court watchers say they expect EPA critics to continue filing emergency petitions asking the justices to stay agency rules even after the court denied three such petitions in a sign that the observers say is meant to show they do not want to be asked to stay every EPA rule during merits litigation. James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform says he fully expects “industry and red-state [attorneys general (AGs)] to keep up these Hail Mary stay petitions,”...

Split D.C. Circuit Panel Denies Stay Of Second EPA Steel Sector Air Rule

A divided appellate panel has denied industry efforts to stay EPA’s air toxics rules for integrated iron and steel plants, a decision coming just weeks after the court recently denied a similar request from the sector to stay the agency’s taconite facility air rule and suggesting a likely similar outcome in a related suit over a rule for coke plants. But even if the industry appeals the latest stay denial to the Supreme Court, as many expect, prospects for a...

High Court Decision Looms On Whether To Hear Suit Over California Waiver

Supreme Court justices have delayed a decision until at least early November about whether to consider reversing an appellate ruling that upheld EPA’s federal preemption waiver for California’s vehicle greenhouse gas standards out to model year 2025, amid calls to intervene in the case from Republican-led states, industry groups and free-market advocates. The justices have already flagged the appeals for discussion at two prior closed-door conferences, most recently on Oct. 18, and observers are expecting that they will relist the...

8th Circuit Weighs Stalling Good Neighbor SIP Case Amid High Court Churn

Judges on the 8th Circuit are considering pausing litigation over EPA’s denial of several states’ “good neighbor” ozone plans, though during Oct. 22 arguments they probed EPA’s shifting positions as a stay on the federal Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) looms and litigation on the venue for such suits churns in the Supreme Court. During the argument in a set of related cases led by Arkansas, et al., v. EPA, et al. , Chief Judge Steven Colloton and Circuit Judges Raymond...

Oil & Gas Group Readies Deregulatory Agenda But Warns Of GOP Overreach

A trade group representing oil and gas producers plans to seek modification or repeal of numerous Biden-era climate and other rules should GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump win the election, even as it is warning members that a potential Republican sweep might spur White House or congressional overreach that creates business risks. But much of the American Exploration and Production Council’s (AXPC) deregulatory agenda would struggle if Democratic nominee Kamala Harris wins the presidency, with the industry in that scenario...

EPA Seeks Remand Of 2023 RFS Waiver Denials After Landmark Ruling

EPA is asking a federal appeals court for a voluntary remand of its decision denying multiple requests from small refiners for waivers from renewable fuel standard (RFS) biofuel blending mandates in 2023, in order to reconsider the denials in the light of a landmark ruling overturning its similar denial of waiver requests for 2022. In an Oct. 21 motion filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Calumet Montana v. EPA , the agency...

As EPA Preps Rules, Environmentalists Seek To Halve Landfills’ Methane

As EPA is developing updated Clean Air Act methane standards for new and existing municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills, environmentalists are floating a new report that says the agency can require facilities to cut emissions by more than half by 2050 by making “common-sense” updates to the standards. Recommended requirements in the Oct. 22 report from Industrious Labs, which advocates for decarbonizing the industrial sector, include improvements in gas collection systems and landfill cover requirements. For example, the report recommends...

6th Circuit allows industry amicus filings in GM appeal

A federal appellate court is granting industry’s groups’ request to support General Motors’ (GM) bid to toss a consumer suit that tests whether the Clean Air Act preempts certain state law emission cheating claims, a sign that the full appellate court is giving serious consideration to GM’s en banc review request. In an Oct. 22 order in Andrei Fenner, et al. v. GM, LLC, et al. , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit granted a joint request...

States Seek High Court Review Of D.C. Circuit’s ‘Proscribed’ GNP Remand

Ohio is leading a quartet of states in asking the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s recent order granting EPA’s request for a voluntary remand of the rulemaking record for the troubled Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) to better justify the measure. In their Oct. 18 petition for certiorari , Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky argue that the remand of the already stayed rule is unlawful under the Clean Air Act. “The Clean Air Act does not permit remand...

Groups Urge D.C. Circuit To Deny ‘Circular Logic’ In Power Plant GHG Case

Environmental groups and other supporters of EPA’s power plant greenhouse gas standards are attacking legal arguments made by opponents of the rule, asserting these critics are relying on “circular logic” to claim that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not sufficiently widespread to serve as the basis for the rule’s toughest requirements. “The Court should reject Petitioners’ self-justifying theory of perpetual regulatory immunity, which is contrary to the statute, precedent, and common sense,” Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, and the...

Over Industry Objection, EPA Ends ‘Defense’ In Oil & Gas Sector NESHAP

Over strong industry objections, EPA has removed the “affirmative defense” provision from its air toxics rule for the oil and gas production, and gas transmission and storage sectors, stripping away the shield against civil penalties amid a broader fight over the future of such defenses in state air plans, air permits and other EPA air rules. In a Federal Register notice slated for publication Oct. 22, EPA removes the affirmative defense language from the National Emission Standards for Hazardous...

Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Air Act Venue Cases Over GNP, RFS Rules

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals in a trio of cases over the Clean Air Act’s venue provisions that govern when rules are “national” in scope and must be litigated in the District of Columbia Circuit, or “local” in scope and must instead be heard in regional courts. Any ruling from the court could upend the decades of precedent set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has generally reviewed most such cases. In...

Testing Haze Rules, Citizens Contest EPA’s Offshore Wind Farm Air Permit

A New Jersey citizens’ group is challenging EPA’s air permit for a planned offshore wind farm in the state, charging the project will undermine the state’s plan for complying with regional haze rules and the permit underestimates its pollution impacts -- a potential test of whether the agency is required to consider such sources in the haze program. In its Oct. 15 petition filed with the agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB), Save Long Beach Island, Inc. (SLBI), a nonprofit group...

EPA Fights Steel Sector Push To Reconsider Good Neighbor Air Rule

EPA is resisting steel sector efforts to reconsider its stayed Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) interstate ozone rule, arguing that industry challengers lack standing to sue, were wrong to insist EPA withdraw the rule from Federal Register publication and were wrong to regard it as unworkable in the wake of several courts’ stays of underlying decisions. EPA details its arguments in an Oct. 15 brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in U.S....

EPA Reaches First Settlement For Fracking Under Obama-Era Methane Rule

The Justice Department (DOJ), EPA and New Mexico have reached a first-time settlement with an oil and gas producer targeting the company’s failure to follow Obama-era requirements for controlling emissions of methane and other pollution during completion of hydraulic fracturing wells. EPA is touting the Oct. 17 settlement with Hilcorp Energy Co. as the first ever to address violations of the Clean Air Act’s new source performance standards (NSPS) “covering well completions following hydraulic fracturing,” according to an agency press...

EPA Poised To Stay Good Neighbor Plan Nationwide After Rule Clears OMB

EPA is poised to imminently stay its Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) interstate ozone rule, halting the troubled program pending the resolution of complex litigation, after the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cleared the measure for publication in the Federal Register . OMB completed pre-publication review of the interim final rule October 17, according to its website. The rule responds to the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Ohio v. EPA that stayed the GNP in additional states...

D.C. Circuit Schedules Oral Argument In EPA Power Plant GHG Rule Case

The D.C. Circuit is scheduling oral arguments for early December in the case challenging EPA’s greenhouse gas limits for existing coal and new gas power plants, offering a further signal that the court is proceeding quickly to consider the case and could issue a decision by next summer. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments Dec. 6 in the case, known as West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et...

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