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.

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...

EPA Disputes Inspector General Finding Of Air Emissions Underreporting

EPA is disputing new findings from its Office of Inspector General (OIG) that air quality monitoring networks nationwide have underreported air pollution because of emissions surges when monitors are inactive, although the agency under the Biden administration already agreed to withhold monitoring schedules to prevent such surges. In its Sept. 17 report , “Evaluation of the EPA’s Oversight of State and Local Ambient Air Monitoring Operating Schedules,” the OIG found that when “intermittent” air monitors were not in operation, air...

House GOP Seeks To Ease Air Permitting As Democrats Balk At Draft Bills

House Republicans’ new bills to ease Clean Air Act requirements for states and industry are running into resistance from Democrats concerned that the measures are too broad and will create new waiver authorities that the Trump administration might abuse, even though some Democrats might agree with elements of the package. At a Sept. 16 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, Republicans on the environment subcommittee threw their weight behind the bills that are aimed at easing air permitting and other...

In Blow To EPA Plan, NAS Says GHG Harms ‘Beyond Scientific Dispute’

The National Academies’ just-issued review of recent climate science says the “evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused [greenhouse gases] is beyond scientific dispute,” rebuffing EPA’s claims, as part of its proposal to undo its 2009 GHG endangerment finding, that the science is unsettled. The Sept. 17 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) underscores appraisals from many observers that EPA’s final rule will have to rely on legal...

House GOP Targets EPA Criminal Enforcement Amid Continuing Indictments

As the Trump administration scales back civil environmental enforcement, House Republicans are suggesting that EPA and the Justice Department (DOJ) should halt existing criminal prosecutions and possibly revisit past settlements in cases against small businesses, particularly producers of devices that disable mandatory vehicle emissions controls. During a Sept. 16 hearing before the House Oversight Committee’s federal law enforcement subcommittee, GOP lawmakers lambasted the Biden EPA for their criminal prosecutions of small defeat device producers, saying criminal enforcement should be limited...

Utah Group, Harley Dealers Reach Landmark Clean Air Act Settlement

Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE) and four local Harley-Davidson dealerships have reached what may be the first proposed Clean Air Act citizen suit settlement, following the group’s successful enforcement action several years ago against the “Diesel Brothers,” hosts of a popular TV show, and their parts distributor, TAP Worldwide. The Sept. 10 proposed consent decree in UPHE v. Harley-Davidson of Salt Lake City, LLC, et al. , in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, resolves...

HFC Manufacturer Asks Full D.C. Circuit To Reconsider Nondelegation Claim

A hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) manufacturer is asking the full D.C. Circuit to rehear its claim that Congress illegally delegated legislative authority to EPA in the 2020 HFC control law, detailing what it sees as faults of a unanimous panel decision that found no constitutional violations in the law’s HFC phasedown program. RMS of Georgia, also known as Choice Refrigerants, writes in a Sept. 15 petition that the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act “instructs an agency to dictate who may continue...

EPA Floats Options For Full, Partial ‘Reallocation’ Of Waived RFS Volumes

EPA is floating a “co-proposal” that suggests either a full “reallocation” of waived biofuel blending volumes for small refiners under the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in future years, or a 50 percent reallocation, under a plan that in effect would see volumes waived for 2023, 2024 and 2025 added instead to proposed volumes for 2026 and 2027. In its proposal announced Sept. 16, EPA suggests a full reallocation of waived volumes to non-exempt refiners could be justified to avoid a...

CARB Seeks To Revive Older Auto Emissions Limits After Waiver Fight

California air regulators are launching an emergency rulemaking to reinstate criteria emissions limits that had been superseded by the state’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) and “omnibus” truck nitrogen oxides (NOx) rules, after Congress scuttled preemption waivers for those rules using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). California Air Resources Board (CARB) officials are doing so while asserting their right to enforce the more stringent standards from ACC II and the omnibus rule, in the event the state succeeds in...

EPA Downplays Congressional Directive For GHG Reporting In Repeal Plan

EPA’s proposed rule to scrap nearly all greenhouse gas reporting for industry is brushing aside arguments that Congress directed such reporting over a decade ago, with the agency also claiming it lacks a basis for requiring “continuous” emissions tracking under its Clean Air Act (CAA) information-gathering authority. EPA’s Sept. 12 proposal also acknowledges that undoing its GHG Reporting Rule (GHGRP) could complicate implementation of federal tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as well as clean hydrogen, but the...

Zeldin Revives Trump NSR Policy Aimed At Barring EPA ‘Second Guessing’

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the agency has re-issued a policy from the first Trump administration aimed at barring officials from “second guessing” states and industry when deciding whether “major source” new source review (NSR) air permits are necessary for new or modified facilities, the latest in a series of NSR revisions he has announced. Zeldin announced the 2017 policy’s reinstatement , reversing the Biden administration 2022 rescission , during a Sept. 15 White House meeting with industry groups, key...

House Panel Weighs Bills To Ease Clean Air Permits, Amid EPA’s NSR Push

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are weighing a series of bills to ease the procedural and substantive burdens industry and states face when seeking and complying with Clean Air Act permits, even as EPA advances guidance and rules to achieve similar goals for the new source review (NSR) program in particular. The committee’s environment panel is holding a Sept. 16 legislative hearing where lawmakers will consider five bills that seek to ease burdens on regulators and regulated...

Environmentalists Target Steel Plant Permits Amid Wider Fight With EPA

Three environmental groups are threatening to sue EPA over its failure to respond to their petitions calling for the agency to object to the air permits of two major steelmaking plants in Indiana, litigation that would open a new front against the facilities amid an ongoing fight over EPA’s delay of tougher Biden-era rules for the sector. In a notice of intent to sue (NOI) letter sent to EPA Sept. 3, a coalition of groups -- Environmental Law and Policy...

Proposed Rule

Fact Sheet


EPA Proposes To Largely Scrap Industrial GHG Reporting Requirements

EPA is seeking to repeal reporting requirements for virtually all industrial sectors currently subject to its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), despite a congressional mandate to create such a program, and to suspend until 2034 most “Subpart W” oil and gas sector rules while also repealing mandates for gas distribution operations. The proposal follows through with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s March pledge to “reconsider” the program -- and subsequent reports that EPA would virtually eliminate it -- even as critics...

Judge Denies DTE Bid To Appeal Subsidiary’s NSR Liability On Eve Of Trial

A federal judge is denying Michigan utility DTE’s request to certify interlocutory appeal to the 6th Circuit and delay the start of a Sept. 15 bench trial to determine whether it is liable for violating Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) rules when its subsidiary EES Coke modified its plant in 2014 in violation of the program’s rules. In a Sept. 11 order in United States v. EES Coke Battery, LLC, et al. , Judge Gershwin Drain of the...

Biogas Sector, Refiners Sue Over EPA’s 2024 Partial Cellulosic RFS Waiver

Producers of renewable natural gas (RNG) from landfills and animal feeding operations, along with oil refiners, are suing EPA over its partial waiver of 2024 requirements for “cellulosic” biofuel under the renewable fuel standard (RFS), with gas producers likely to argue the cut was unlawful, while refiners argue it was insufficient. The Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas Sept. 4 filed its suit against EPA’s July 7 rule, which reduced the cellulosic biofuel blending requirement for 2024. The coalition filed its...

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