| Sourced From |
By Siobhan Hughes and Ian Talley Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday put companies on notice that it intends to require power plants, factories and oil refiners to obtain permits covering greenhouse-gas emissions, but aims to limit the reach of any rules to the largest emitters.
The announcement, to be made by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson later Wednesday, injects a sharp reminder into a climate-change debate that is just beginning in the U.S. Senate. The message: the Obama administration is ready and able to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions if Congress fails to do so, though it hopes to avoid bringing small businesses like restaurants and churches under its oversight.
“The EPA’s ready to work with Congress,” Jackson said later on a conference call. “But, we’re not going to continue with business as usual while we wait for Congress to act.”
The EPA has already proposed officially declaring greenhouse gases are a public danger, as well as new auto emissions standards. Wednesday’s announcement moves the focus onto stationary sources.
“We can begin reducing emissions from the nation’s largest greenhouse-gas emitting facilities without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy,” Jackson said in a press release.
Jackson said a final endangerment proposal would be finalized “soon,” and that the agency was considering expanding its regulatory mandate to include more sectors in the transportation industry.
“In addition to the national fuel economy proposals for light duty vehicles, we see potential for significant cuts in other transportation sectors, which together account for 28% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions,” she said on the conference call. Airlines, trains and trucks could also fall under regulation as major mobile emitters.
The EPA believes that regulating vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions paves the way for regulations of emissions from power plants, factories and oil refineries.
Wednesday’s proposal, which the EPA suggests it aims to finalize by the spring of 2010, marks a major shift in regulation of industrial America. If adopted, companies would have to outfit new power plants with the most up-to-date controls on carbon-dioxide emissions, or risk being denied regulatory permits. Similar best-available technology would have to be incorporated into any major upgrades. That could mean buying new boilers, or requiring power plants to replace coal with biomass, as FirstEnergy Corp.’s (FE) Ohio Edison Co. utility was required to do in a settlement with the EPA and the Justice Department earlier this year.
The EPA is expected to spell out what would qualify in later guidance. Jackson said later that there are no emission limits in the proposed rule and application would be on a case-by-case basis.
The proposal marks a major reversal from the Bush administration’s EPA, whose administrator decided that the EPA didn’t have to worry about carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Environmentalists hailed the change, saying it marked a milestone.
“This is a seismic shift,” said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group.
Smaller businesses would be shielded – at least theoretically – since the rules would apply only to facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. Some people have argued that the EPA is on shaky ground in trying to limit the reach of any regulations, since the Clean Air Act doesn’t distinguish between large and small polluters.
“The question is – is this legal?” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association. “EPA is trying to play Solomon here, cleaving this thing is such a way that the law does not seem to permit.”
Some industry legal experts say that because the Clean Air Act clearly states a 250 ton threshold, the EPA’s tailoring limit of 25,000 tons can be challenged in court.
Jackson said EPA and DOJ lawyers believe the rule, if finalized, has legal integrity based on precedents that allow the government to avoid drafting laws the Administrator termed “absurd.”
Senator James Inhofe, R-Ok., ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said Congress would seek to neuter the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. “At some point, Congress will intervene to stop EPA from implementing the Administration’s backdoor energy tax,” he said.
An attempt last week to prevent the EPA from using its Clean Air Act authority failed in the Senate.
-By Siobhan Hughes, Siobhan.
[email protected]
