Climate Policy Watch

This page is designed to keep you updated on the latest national policies to reduce greenhouse gases, drawing from all the Inside EPA family of publications and allowing you access to all this coverage regardless of your site-license restrictions.

Topic Subtitle
This page is designed to keep you updated on the latest national policies to reduce greenhouse gases, drawing from all the Inside EPA family of publications and allowing you access to all this coverage regardless of your site-license restrictions.

Latest EPA ‘Trends’ Report Bolsters Calls For Stronger Auto GHG Rules

EPA’s latest annual fuel economy “trends” report is showing a decline in the fuel efficiency of new vehicles for the first time in several years, bolstering calls for aggressive action by the incoming Biden administration to re-strengthen greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards rolled back under President Donald Trump. The Jan. 6 report comes amid expectations that the Biden administration will treat vehicle standards as a top priority, perhaps starting with efforts to reaffirm state GHG and zero-emission vehicle rules,...

Ewire: Congress certifies Biden’s win as Democrats take Senate

Congress has formally certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November election, though the pre-dawn votes occurred against the backdrop of a day of unprecedented violence at the Capitol, which was condemned by a variety of both business and environmental organizations as being inspired by departing President Donald Trump. Almost lost in the chaos was the formal declaration that Democrats will take control of the Senate after surprise victories in the two Georgia runoff races, bolstering their ability to confirm...

Biofuels Groups Press Biden EPA For RFS Waiver Denials, Transparency

Biofuels groups are pressing the incoming Biden EPA to swiftly deny dozens of pending applications from small refiners for renewable fuel standard (RFS) compliance waivers and to be more transparent about the waiver process, as they seek to build a productive relationship with Biden’s choice for agency administrator, Michael Regan. The push follows EPA’s recent announcement of a consent decree with Pennsylvania refiner United Refining Company in which the agency agreed to a Feb. 19 deadline to grant or deny...

Democrats’ Georgia Victories Might Boost Prospects For Sweeping EJ Bill

Democrats’ apparent victories in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia may bolster prospects that a narrow Democratic-controlled Congress could advance landmark sweeping environmental justice (EJ) legislation, including a provision to overturn a strict high court bar for bringing discrimination claims, attorneys say. During a Jan. 5 Association of Corporate Counsel web event, Stacey Halliday, an attorney affiliated with Beveridge & Diamond, cited President-elect Joe Biden’s comprehensive EJ plan released in July during the presidential campaign as the road map...

Sen. Whitehouse urges climate commission to probe Trump actions

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is calling for President-elect Joe Biden to investigate President Donald Trump’s “climate denial and obstruction,” arguing that the United States cannot just “move on” from Trump and arguing for the creation of a special presidential commission to “expose” the president’s actions and their “devastating” effects. Whitehouse says that Trump has engaged in a climate science denial and destruction campaign that “may prove to be the most insidious and systematic fraud in American history." The senator outlined...

Biden plans to nominate D.C. Circuit Judge Garland for attorney general

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate as his attorney general (AG) Merrick Garland, currently a judge on the appellate U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit who has heard a number of lawsuits over EPA policies, including as a member of a three-judge panel that stayed an Obama administration climate rule for truck trailers. Garland was previously nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Supreme Court following the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but...

Democrats’ Expected Senate Control Gives New Opening For Biden EPA

Expected victories by the Democratic candidates in a pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia mean the party is poised to wrest narrow control of the upper chamber later this month, likely easing the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks and softening any Capitol Hill oversight of his environmental agenda. Further, Democratic control of the Senate also makes it more likely that lawmakers can quickly scrap Trump-era rules issued over the past several months under the Congressional Review Act (CRA),...

Oil industry seeks high court review of more nuisance cases

Days ahead of high-profile Supreme Court oral arguments over a key procedural issue involving local governments’ climate change nuisance cases against oil majors, the industry is filing additional petitions urging the high court to review several similar appellate court decisions. At issue in the case the justices will hear Jan. 19, BP, PLC, et al. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore , is whether appeals courts can consider all issues raised to justify “removal” of a case to federal...

Ewire: Warnock wins, Ossoff leads in key Senate runoffs

In two pivotal Georgia runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate and the fate of key environmental legislation, the Rev. Raphael Warnock (D) has defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), while fellow Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is holding a narrow lead over Sen. David Perdue (R), who is vying for a second term in office. Warnock’s victory will make him the Peach State’s first Black senator, and it puts the Senate majority within Democrats’ reach, the Associated Press...

Former State Officials Urge Biden EPA Funding Hike, More Cooperation

A bipartisan group of more than 40 former state regulators is urging the incoming Biden EPA to significantly ramp up cooperation with states and tribes on environmental programs, while also warning that current federal and state funding resources are inadequate to tackle climate change and other major problems. The calls surface in a Dec. 21 memo to Michael Regan, who is currently serving as North Carolina’s top environment official and is President-elect Joe Biden’s planned nominee to lead EPA. The...

Northeastern Air Regulators Press Biden To Boost Electrification Of Trucks

Air regulators in the Northeast are asking President-elect Joe Biden to expand his support for vehicle electrification to include medium- and heavy-duty trucks, urging him to consider steps to promote electric vehicles as crucial to reducing both conventional air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In a recent letter obtained by Inside EPA , Paul Miller, executive director of the group Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), urges Biden “to identify electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs) as a...

Amid Calls For Rescission, Wheeler Defends Science Rule From Backers’ Concerns

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is seeking to address concerns from conservative supporters that the agency’s controversial science transparency rule is too narrow and gives officials discretion to exempt critical studies from its requirements even as environmentalists and other critics ramp up calls for the incoming Biden EPA to rescind it. The rule “ensures that all pivotal science go through independent peer review; that is consistent with guidance from the Office of Management & Budget. Finally, the rule requires the agency...

Quoted: EPA science transparency rule draws mixed reaction

EPA’s final scientific transparency rule released Jan. 5 is drawing a mixed reaction, with the free-market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) offering support for the regulation but environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers warning that the rule will make it harder for the agency to pursue stringent regulations. Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rule during an online forum hosted by CEI. “I fundamentally believe that the American public has a right to know about EPA’s regulations and their scientific underpinnings,” he...

Ewire: EPA finalizes controversial science ‘transparency’ rule

EPA is finalizing a long-pending rulemaking that will limit the types of scientific research it can use when writing new regulations, a controversial effort that the Trump administration argues will boost “transparency” but that critics warn could undermine future public health protections. The agency will publish the final rule , in the Jan. 6 Federal Register . Echoing several other recently completed major rules, the Trump administration is making its new science rule take effect immediately upon publication in the...

New House rules could ease passage of climate-related spending

New House rules for the 117th Congress give lawmakers new discretion to ease self-imposed spending restrictions to address climate change, potentially opening the door to more ambitious climate-related initiatives even as questions loom about whether such investments can be enacted by a divided Capitol Hill. The more flexible spending language is included in a broader rules package approved Jan. 4, that also separately reauthorizes a select House panel to address the climate crisis, according to the text and a related...

Industry Gives Strong Support For New DOT NEPA Rules, But States Split

Industry groups are offering strong support for a controversial Department of Transportation (DOT) proposal to adopt National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) streamlining measures the Trump White House finalized earlier last year, but state transportation agencies are split on the plan while environmentalists strongly oppose it. DOT is the first agency to seek to adopt the controversial White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) rules, which are being challenged in four federal district courts, and it is hoping to finalize the...

Democrats, unions back competing candidates for EPA Region 5 chief

Most of Illinois’ Democratic lawmakers in the House are supporting state water Commissioner Debra Shore to be the administrator of EPA’s Region 5 covering several Midwest states, at odds with a major agency union that is endorsing a former EPA official and current gas utility executive Micah Ragland for the position. Region 5 serves Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin and 35 tribes, and whoever President-elect Joe Biden selects as regional administrator does not have to win Senate confirmation. Shore,...

EPA consent decree punts RFS waiver decision to Biden administration

EPA is proposing a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by a refining company that would punt into the Biden administration a final decision on whether to grant the refiner a waiver from renewable fuel standard (RFS) biofuel production mandates, teeing up an early test for the incoming Biden EPA on its RFS waiver policy. The decree published in the Jan. 4 Federal Register would end litigation brought by Pennsylvania refiner United Refining Company in the U.S. District...

EPA Cost-Benefit Rule May Face Early Attacks By Biden Administration

The publication of EPA’s final overhaul of cost-benefit procedures for its air program is setting the stage for administrative and legal steps by the incoming Biden administration and its allies to reverse the policy, including claims that Trump officials improperly deemed the rule immediately effective. That issue is just one of several objections to the rule, with critics separately deriding the agency’s effort to rely on generic Clean Air Act authority for the regulation they claim is too procedural to...

Pages

Not a subscriber? Request 30 days free access to exclusive environmental policy reporting.