EPA Agenda

EPA extends GHG endangerment plan comments to Sept. 22

EPA has extended by a week the public comment period for its high-profile repeal of the agency’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding, to Sept. 22, to accommodate a Clean Air Act (CAA) requirement to keep the comment period open 30 days after public hearings. However, the agency to date is declining to grant any longer deadline extension that a coalition of Democratic-led states has sought. EPA added a third day of hearings, Aug. 21, in addition to its original Aug. 19-20...

EPA Bid To Terminate Solar Grants Hinges On Trump’s Budget Law

EPA is arguing last month’s budget reconciliation law requires it to terminate nearly $7 billion in grants for community solar energy deployment because the statute rescinded the agency’s ability to oversee the awards, but recipients are readying litigation against the move and are likely to argue EPA is misinterpreting the new law. “As both the grant appropriations and the EPA’s administrative cost appropriation are rescinded, the agency no longer possesses either the substantive legal authority or the financial appropriations needed...

Democratic AGs Slam EPA’s Use Of DOE Science Report In GHG Risk Repeal

Adding to mounting criticism, Democratic attorneys general (AGs) and a former EPA research chief are warning that the agency’s use of a draft Department of Energy (DOE) report questioning mainstream climate science as part of its proposal to scrap its GHG endangerment finding raises fundamental legal risks for the agency’s effort. The AGs detail their concerns in an Aug. 6 request for EPA to more than double its 45-day comment period for the proposal, which would scuttle the finding that...

Industry Wary Of EPA’s Proposal To Scrap All Power Plant GHG Authority

Utility and other industry groups are expressing unease or avoiding a direct position on EPA’s primary proposal to remove the agency’s threshold authority to regulate power plants’ greenhouse gases, with most groups focusing their advocacy on supporting the agency’s “alternate” plan that rolls back Biden-era rules but retains the regulatory authority. Industry is “concerned about maintaining EPA’s ultimate authority to do something about climate, rather than determining that there’s just no authority [for the agency] to do anything,” says one...

Former EPA Official Blasts ‘Extreme’ Trump EPA Climate Science Stance

Former EPA official Robert Sussman is calling the Trump administration’s science-related arguments to justify repeal of its greenhouse gas endangerment finding an “extreme verdict” devoid of independent review, while urging “an organized public campaign” to translate mainstream science “into terms that a lay audience can understand.” “It is hard to imagine a more consequential scientific determination than EPA’s repudiation of its own endangerment finding, the anchor of U.S. climate policy over three administrations and a pillar of the global response...

Environmentalists Outline Legal Case Against EPA’s Utility GHG Rule Repeal

Major environmental groups are detailing their legal case against EPA’s proposal to repeal greenhouse gas standards for power plants, arguing the plan is “fundamentally” at odds with the Clean Air Act’s purpose and that numerous provisions are unlawfully arbitrary including a failure to weigh key emissions implications of the proposal. EPA’s view is “squarely at odds with the statutory text and structure,” says Aug. 7 comments from a half dozen major environmental groups. There, the environmentalists are referring to EPA’s...

RFF Projects Higher Net Costs From EPA’s Power Plant GHG Rule Repeal

Environmental economists are warning that the Trump EPA’s proposal to repeal all power plant greenhouse gas standards will impose roughly double the net costs to society than the agency projected, and potentially far more, due to projected high electricity demand and Republicans’ recent law scaling back clean energy tax credits. “Considering both climate and health damages, this regulatory repeal is expected to cost the United States $198--855 billion,” says an Aug. 7 report from Resources for the Future (RFF) researchers...

EPA’s Science Justification For Scrapping Climate Risk Finding Draws Fire

The Trump EPA’s science-related claims that seek to justify its plan to scuttle the 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding are drawing heavy criticism from experts who say they selectively cite data, misrepresent prior studies and dismiss overwhelming evidence of climate change harms. While EPA’s primary justification for undoing the finding focuses on alleged legal deficiencies, the agency also floats an alternative basis claiming the Obama administration’s review of the science was suspect -- with much of those claims premised on...

National Academies Launch Climate Science Review, Amid EPA GHG Plan

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) is launching a review of whether greenhouse gas emissions are “reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare in the U.S.,” offering the scientific community’s latest response to the Trump EPA’s proposal to scrap its GHG risk finding. “It is critical that federal policymaking is informed by the best available scientific evidence,” National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt says in an Aug. 7 statement detailing the review . “Decades of...

Groups Voice Oversight Worry As Texas Poised To Get CO2 Permit Power

Community groups are expressing concerns that a Texas agency will soon receive primary permitting authority over carbon storage wells needed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the state, even as environmentalists acknowledge the state has met the necessary legal requirements for EPA to grant such authority. Meanwhile, oil and gas groups are supporting EPA’s plan to grant “Class VI” primacy to the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency known as the Railroad Commission (RRC). Backers say it would allow...

Environmentalists Seize On Gas Price Scenarios To Attack GHG Rule Repeal

Environmentalists are amplifying claims that EPA’s sweeping proposal to repeal its vehicle greenhouse gas standards will spur a sharp increase in gasoline and diesel prices due to greater fuel demand, seizing on what they view as a politically potent attack on the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda at EPA. “If EPA pulls these policies back, then Americans will lose out on cars and SUVs that get better gas mileage or, in the case of [electric vehicles (EVs)], get...

EPA’s GHG Plans Invite High Court To Scuttle Massachusetts, Experts Say

EPA is inviting the Supreme Court to revisit a nearly 20-year-old decision paving the way for the agency’s greenhouse gas standards, experts say, as the Trump administration’s two proposals to scuttle GHG regulatory authority appear designed as a challenge to that decision to foreclose virtually any future standards. These experts say key elements of EPA’s recent proposal to rescind its 2009 GHG endangerment finding either ignore or conflict with language in the high court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA...

EPA Claims GHG Endangerment Repeal Retains Air Law Preemption Shield

EPA is claiming that repealing the agency’s 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding and related vehicle GHG limits would nevertheless preserve federal preemption of state vehicle GHG standards under the Clean Air Act (CAA) as well as federal common law claims related to GHGs. The agency’s arguments -- which could affect oil majors’ chief legal defense against a raft of over two dozen climate tort cases proceeding in state courts -- underscore a potential high stakes consequence for industry from EPA’s...

EPA Claims Air Law Covers Only Local Pollution, Blocking GHG Regulation

EPA’s legal justification for its major proposal to rescind the agency’s 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding claims that the Clean Air Act (CAA) is “best” interpreted to focus on addressing harms from a “direct” exposure to local air pollution, and that the law is not intended to cover global climate change effects from GHGs. If finalized, the argument would set up a major legal battle regarding the meaning of several prior Supreme Court decisions -- including 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA...

Industry Groups Offer Cautious Pushback To EPA’s GHG Finding Repeal

Major power and oil industry groups are offering cautious pushback to EPA’s proposal to rescind its 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding that underlies its climate rules, indicating that industry is not comfortable with the notion of fully scrapping such rules in large part because it could undercut federal preemption of state rules. While some groups in early reaction to EPA’s July 29 plan are supporting the Trump administration’s proposal to repeal Biden-era vehicle GHG standards, they offered a more careful...

EPA Moves To Extend Oil And Gas Sector Emissions Compliance Deadlines

EPA has released an interim final rule to extend Biden EPA compliance deadlines for control of methane and other emissions from oil and gas facilities, vowing that the measure will be the “first of multiple actions the EPA plans to take to ensure that oil and gas regulations do not overburden producers.” “The extensions in the [new rule] provide more realistic timelines for owners and operators to meet requirements and for states to develop and submit plans for limiting emissions...

Officials, Stakeholders Spar Over EPA Plan To Repeal GHG Risk Finding

Various state and industry officials, environmentalists and other stakeholders are already sparring over the Trump EPA’s long-expected proposal to rescind the agency’s 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding as well as associated GHG rules for all types of vehicles. The July 29 proposed rule says the agency now believes section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act “does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns and, on that basis, propose to rescind the administrator’s prior...

Zeldin Touts GHG Risk Finding Repeal As Unprecedented Deregulatory Move

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is declaring that the agency’s imminent proposal to undo the agency’s 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding and related vehicle GHG rules “will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” previewing arguments the agency will make in defense of the plan. Zeldin’s declaration on a July 29 edition of the conservative podcast Ruthless -- in advance of a scheduled afternoon event in Indiana to formally unveil the proposal -- also took frequent jibes at...

EPA Endangerment Finding Plan Claims Lack Of Authority To Limit GHGs

The Trump EPA’s just-issued proposal to rescind the agency’s 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding and repeal all GHG standards for vehicles makes a series of arguments for why the original Obama-era finding and rule are unlawful, claims that will be tested in suits that environmentalists and other critics are already vowing to file. For example, EPA claims in announcing the plan that Obama officials that wrote the original finding ignored “Congress’s clear intent” by making the finding “totally separate from...

Goffman Says EPA GHG Finding Attack Clashes With Supreme Court Ruling

A former top Biden EPA official is expecting that EPA’s imminent proposal to scrap the agency’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding will clash with a key Supreme Court ruling’s “broad” view of EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs, and that it will be difficult for Trump officials to show the costs of the agency’s climate regulations outweigh benefits. “I think there is going to be a lot of tension between that which EPA is proposing to argue and what the Supreme court...

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