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.

Long-running Ameren NSR case ends with $61 mitigation plan

A federal district judge has entered an order requiring Ameren Missouri to pay $61 million for mitigation relief to address the effects of illegal sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, finally ending a long-running new source review (NSR) enforcement case first brought by EPA in 2011. The Dec. 17 order in United States v. Ameren by Judge Rodney Sippel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri requires the company to spend $25 million to provide vouchers for...

Trump EPA Expected To Dismiss Novel Denka CAA Enforcement Suit

The incoming Trump EPA is expected to dismiss the Biden administration’s novel Clean Air Act “imminent and substantial endangerment” enforcement suit against Denka Performance Elastomer (DPE), industry sources say, a move that would end a first-time trial in such a case that could begin as soon as next spring. Industry sources following the litigation say they expect the Trump EPA to quickly drop the case, USA v. DPE LLC , which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the...

Attention Shifts To Remaining California Waiver Requests After Approvals

Observers are awaiting EPA’s responses to California’s remaining requests for preemption waivers covering the state’s mobile source standards, amid expectations the agency is particularly likely to approve a quartet of measures limiting emissions from harbor craft, offroad diesel vehicles, transport refrigeration units and small offroad engines. The shift of attention -- shortly after EPA blessed California’s Advanced Clean Car II (ACC II) and “omnibus” heavy truck rules -- comes amid a diminishing window for the agency to formally respond to...

EPA moves up implementation deadline for PM NAAQS

EPA is moving up by three months states’ deadlines for submitting plans for attaining its tougher national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), after finding that it set incorrect deadlines in the final PM2.5 NAAQS rule. In a “correction” notice published in the Federal Register Dec. 19, EPA says that the rule, which was published in the Register March 6 and became effective May 6, erroneously started a clock for states to submit state...

Industry Groups Sue EPA Over NSPS For Thousands Of Liquid Fuel Tanks

Fuel terminal operators, chemical manufacturers and a building materials manufacturer are suing EPA over its tougher air emissions standards for new volatile organic liquid (VOL) fuel tanks, including thousands of gasoline tanks, amid industry fears that the rule would trigger stricter limits for existing sources, not only new or modified ones. In lawsuits filed December 16 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, petitioners challenge EPA’s October rule tightening the new source performance standards (NSPS)...

EPA Rebuffs ‘Major Questions’ Attacks On Waiver For California ZEV Rules

EPA is outlining numerous arguments for why its newly granted preemption waiver for California’s Advanced Clean Cars II program -- including its 100 percent zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) requirement by 2035 -- should survive the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine or various other legal attacks. Many of the justifications -- detailed in a decision document released Dec. 18 -- echo agency arguments during defenses of prior California waivers as well as federal EPA emissions standards that include electric vehicles as...

Court Sets Compromise Deadline For Hazardous Waste Combustor Rule

A federal district court has set a Dec. 31, 2025 deadline for the Trump EPA to complete a final rule revising air toxics limits for hazardous waste combustors (HWCs), rejecting agency arguments that it cannot issue such a rule until the summer of 2026, but also rebuffing arguments from environmentalists that the agency should release the rule sooner. In a Dec. 12 memorandum opinion in Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League v. Regan , Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District...

EPA Clashes With States, Industry Over Clean Air Act Venue Provisions

EPA and opposing states and industry groups are presenting the Supreme Court with starkly different arguments on when certain agency actions may collectively be considered “nationally applicable” such that they may be challenged only in the D.C. Circuit in a major test of Clean Air Act (CAA) venue provisions. In recent briefs, EPA and allied biofuels groups outline their argument that dozens of EPA denials of refiners’ requests for waivers from renewable fuel standard (RFS) compliance obligations, issued in two...

EPA Backs California Clean Car, Truck NOx Waivers, With Others Pending

EPA is granting waivers of federal preemption for California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) vehicle emissions program, which includes a 100 percent zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate by 2035, and for the state’s heavy truck “omnibus” nitrogen oxides (NOx) rule, though California’s programs will likely face stiff scrutiny from the Trump administration. The move announced Dec. 18 comes with the agency indicating it is still reviewing other pending requests from the state for similar approvals of other mobile source...

In Win For Biofuels, FY25 Budget Resolution Authorizes Year-Round E15

The continuing budget resolution (CR) that Congress just released authorizes 15 percent ethanol fuel (E15) for sale year-round across the country, a move long sought by biofuels producers, and considered preferable by some in the oil sector to a further fracturing of the gasoline market that would otherwise result under EPA’s current rule. Currently, E15 may not be sold in the summer ozone season, from June 1 to September 15, when EPA’s tougher fuel volatility limits apply. But the final...

10th Circuit Panel Weighs Colorado Oil & Gas NSR Permitting Exclusion

A panel of 10th Circuit judges is weighing environmentalists’ claim that EPA unlawfully approved changes to Colorado’s plan for attaining federal ozone limits to exclude fracking emissions from air permitting determinations for oil and gas sources, though it is unclear if the court will find it has jurisdiction to hear the dispute. In Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) v. EPA, et al. , now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, environmentalists are challenging EPA’s approval...

D.C. Circuit Wrestles With EPA Power To Reconsider NAAQS In PM Suit

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are wrestling with whether EPA has power to “reconsider” federal air quality standards and what fresh evidence it must present, in a case testing its tougher limit for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that will set a precedent for other possible reconsiderations. During Dec. 16 oral arguments in Commonwealth of Kentucky, et al., v. EPA, et al. , Judges Patricia Millett and J. Michelle Childs and Senior Judge...

Supreme Court Spurns States’ Constitutional Challenge To California Waiver

The Supreme Court is declining GOP states’ request to take up their constitutional challenge to California’s authority to set vehicle greenhouse gas standards out to model year 2025, just days after the justices agreed to hear the narrow issue of whether fuel industry groups have standing to challenge the authority. In a Dec. 16 order , the justices denied certiorari in State of Ohio et al v. EPA , where the states had broadly argued the Clean Air Act’s...

Supreme Court To Review Standing Questions In California Waiver Dispute

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a dispute over an appellate decision that leaves in place EPA’s federal preemption waiver for California vehicle standards out to model year 2025, though the justices are suggesting they might focus their review on liquid fuels groups’ standing to bring suit and not the legality of the waiver itself. The court in a Dec. 13 order granted certiorari in Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA -- an appeal by biofuel and...

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 --...

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