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.

EPA Finalizes Controversial Guide Easing Air Act ‘Contingency Measures’

EPA is finalizing guidance easing requirements for states to craft “contingency measures” (CMs) that apply if areas miss milestones for attaining federal air quality standards, retaining the approach it floated in a 2023 draft despite states’ warnings that it asks too much of them, and environmentalists’ claims that it does not go far enough to curb pollution. The final guide , which is dated Dec. 3 but was only announced publicly in a Federal Register notice slated for publication...

6th Circuit Appears Open To Challenge On EPA Exceptional Events Finding

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit, during arguments over one of the first challenges to a decision under EPA’s exceptional events policy for air quality standards, is appearing receptive to environmentalists’ claims that data do not support the agency’s decision to exclude two ozone exceedances in Detroit blamed on Canadian wildfires. While the litigation is fact-specific, Nicholas Leonard of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center tells Inside EPA that the court’s resolution of the exceptional events issue is...

D.C. Circuit Slated To Hear PM NAAQS Test Case, But May Not Reach Ruling

A D.C. Circuit panel will hear oral argument Dec. 16 in a landmark case that will test EPA’s authority to reconsider particular matter (PM) and other air quality standards as well as whether the agency must consider costs in such cases, though the panel is unlikely to rule as the incoming Trump administration will likely reverse the tougher standard. Judges Patricia Millett, J. Michelle Childs and Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg, appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C...

EPA poised to publish proposed turbines NSPS

EPA is scheduled to publish its tougher new source performance standards (NSPS) rule for stationary turbines, including gas-fired units at power plants, in the Federal Register Dec. 13, opening a 90-day public comment period, though the measure faces an uncertain fate given the incoming Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. The plan , released Nov. 22, would require selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology for many turbines to reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) but it would leave existing sulfur oxides limits unchanged. The...

EPA Urges Supreme Court To Decline Review Of GNP Record Remand

EPA and allied states are urging the Supreme Court to deny review of a lower court’s remand of the record for the Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) interstate air emissions rule, arguing that states and industry seeking review cannot show harm as the rule is now stayed nationwide, and that its remand response is now complete anyway. “This Court should follow its usual practice of declining to review interlocutory orders. That practice is particularly apt here because enforcement of the Rule...

Critics Charge SCAQMD Slowing Port ISR, Building Decarbonization Rules

Environmentalists are criticizing South Coast air district officials for allegedly slowing efforts to advance an indirect source rule (ISR) to reduce port pollution as well as two building decarbonization rules, and pressing board members to reverse what they see as an unnecessary pivot to appease industry representatives. “Lobbyists from some of the most polluting industries have fought to weaken these rules, delay their implementation, and even resort to legal challenges. Yet, this agency has risen above these challenges before --...

Truckers, Towing Firms Make Final Pitch For Relief Under CARB’s ZEV Rules

Trucking industry groups and towing companies are making 11th-hour pitches to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to provide further compliance relief under the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) zero-emission sales mandate rule, while also challenging officials’ claims about why there is a shortage of new diesel trucks on the market. “We dispute the conclusion in the California Truck Availability Analysis that frames the on-going truck market disruption as a communication problem between manufacturers, dealers and fleet customers,” states a Dec...

Split 5th Circuit Backs Landmark Air Penalty Amid Confusion On Standing

A starkly divided 5th Circuit has upheld a landmark civil penalty imposed on oil giant ExxonMobil for Clean Air Act (CAA) violations, in a profoundly divided opinion that otherwise fails to resolve key questions over citizens’ standing to sue, amid a dispute over whether the court should even have heard the long-running case again. Given the judges’ often-rancorous divisions, the case appears to be a good candidate for appeal to the Supreme Court on the question of when citizens have...

As EPA Preps Waiver, Industry Attacks ‘Unachievable’ California ZEV Rules

Auto manufacturers are stepping up their attacks on California’s latest round of zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate rules that have been adopted by 11 other “section 177” states, signaling that industry will be pressing courts and the incoming Trump administration to defeat EPA’s imminent expected approval of a preemption waiver for the rules. “The California/177 states are telling automakers what kind of vehicles to sell under a program that is an unaccountable, unachievable regulatory wormhole,” states a Dec. 11 memo released...

EPA Modestly Tightens Secondary NAAQS, But Requires No Emissions Cuts

EPA’s just-issued rule modifying “secondary” national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) slightly tightens a limit for sulfur oxides (SOx) but requires no new emissions cuts, leaving other limits unchanged and providing states and industry with “streamlined” compliance options, although the incoming Trump EPA may reverse the rule anyway. In its rule signed Dec. 10, but not yet published in the Federal Register , EPA revises the SOx limit using different metrics than the current limit set in 1971. Secondary NAAQS...

Final Rule

Fact Sheet

Alternative Compliance Method


Environmentalists seek to back EPA in Denka compliance deadline suit

Local environmentalists are seeking to intervene on EPA’s behalf in an appellate suit over Louisiana’s decision to extend by nearly two years Denka Performance Elastomers’s (DPE) deadline for complying with the agency’s strict new chloroprene emissions limits, which the agency had required the company to comply with in 90 days. Concerned Citizens of St. John and Rise St. James filed a Dec. 6 motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to intervene, a move that if...

EPA Poised To Issue Plan Curbing Waste Incinerator Emissions In 10 States

EPA is slated to publish a federal plan enforcing 2019 emission guidelines (EGs) for commercial and industrial solid waste incinerators (CISWI) in 10 states and U.S. territories, triggering a requirement for non-compliant incinerators to shut down within 30 days. In a notice scheduled for publication in Federal Register Dec. 11, EPA finalizes its plan for compliance with the EGs. “The implementation of the emission guidelines will result in emissions reductions of the regulated pollutants including cadmium, hydrogen chloride, lead,...

EPA Faces Possible Suit Over Aftermarket Enforcement In Older Vehicles

A company that tunes diesel engines to bolster their efficiency is threatening to sue EPA, charging that a consent decree the company signed in 2023 exceeds Clean Air Act limits on the agency’s ability to regulate a vehicle’s “full useful life,” which is generally 10 years, not the broader definition officials adopted in 2020 guidance. Detroit-based Green Diesel Engineering (GDE) filed a Nov. 14 notice of intent (NOI) to sue that cites a May 31, 2023, settlement the company entered...

Steel sector seeks rehearing of air rule stay denial

The steel industry is seeking en banc rehearing of an appeals court decision denying its request to stay EPA’s tougher air toxics rule for integrated steel manufacturing, claiming that recent high court precedent ending deference to agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous statutory terms requires rehearing of the divided panel’s decision. In a Dec. 6 filing , steelmakers Cleveland Cliffs Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp. asks the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rehear the court’s Oct...

EPA Defends Principle Of ‘Modular’ Interstate Air Rules In GNP Remand

EPA’s defense of the “modular” structure of its stayed Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) interstate air rule in response to Supreme Court criticism aims to protect a method of regulation that faces doubtful immediate prospects under the incoming Trump administration, but might be revived by a future administration should it survive judicial review. In its Dec. 3 notice , which is slated for publication in the Federal Register Dec. 10, the agency attempts to answer accusations from the high court...

OMB Reviewing EPA Plan To Cut Air Toxics From Small Chemical Plants

EPA has sent its plan to cut air toxics from hundreds of smaller “area source” chemical manufacturing plants for White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pre-publication review, in a rulemaking that may aim to limit emissions of the carcinogenic solvent ethylene oxide (EtO) but may never be finalized by the Trump administration. OMB received the proposal from EPA Dec. 5, according to OMB’s website, starting a review process that typically takes up to 90 days. EPA is under...

Court Scraps EPA Denial Of Kentucky Interstate Air Plan, Boosting GNP Foes

A federal appeals court has vacated EPA’s disapproval of Kentucky’s state implementation plan (SIP) for interstate ozone that the agency used to bring the state into its Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) -- the first merits ruling in the many parallel suits over the plan, and one that will boost its critics -- likely including the incoming Trump administration. In its Dec. 6 decision , a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Commonwealth...

D.C. Circuit Judges Grapple With CCS Basis For Power Plant GHG Rules

A three-judge D.C. Circuit panel is grappling with numerous key issues in the Biden EPA’s high-profile power plant greenhouse gas standards, with oral arguments offering hints about where they see vulnerabilities in a measure that has been a chief target for rollback by the incoming Trump administration. The judges’ comments during Dec. 6 oral argument in the case, West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al. , could have implications for future power plant GHG rulemakings, even as the panel...

Industry Groups Target EPA Rules For ‘Regulatory Reset’ Under Trump

A broad swath of industry groups led by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has issued a deregulatory roadmap targeting high-profile EPA rules that they want the incoming Trump administration to reverse or scale back, including the agency’s tougher fine particle standard and an array of air, water and other rules. The roadmap is laid out in a Dec. 5 letter to President-elect Donald Trump signed by more than 100 organizations. It charges that “regulations are strangling our economy” with...

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