Obama's EPA Boldly Delays Climate Rule For Powerplants; "No Timetable" For Implementation - WP

[hatrack]

You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13.

We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to bolster their legal case for imposing the new carbon restrictions.

On Friday, EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson confirmed that the agency would not finalize the controversial proposal on time. Johnson said in an e-mail that the agency was still reviewing more than 2 million comments on its proposal. “We are working on the rule and no timetable has been set,” Johnson said.

EPA is likely to alter the rule in some way in an effort to make sure it can withstand a legal challenge, according to sources familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the standard has not been finalized. One possibility could include establishing a separate standard for coal-fired power plants, as opposed to gas-fired ones.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/12/its-official-epa-delays-climate-rule-for-new-power-plants/

[bowens43]

1. Another betrayal

how about this one true believers? Going to offer some lame attempt to justify this one too?

[villager]

3. oh they will - each of these policy failures is really *our* fault, of course

Since many here have discovered the old Republican edict that one must never ever criticize the president !

[enough]

2. A recent relevant article: Former EPA Climate Adviser Rips Obama Over Environmental Regulations

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/former-epa-climate-adviser-rips-obama-admins-regulatory-approach

A very discouraging perspective.

snip>

In a stinging critique at the Yale Journal on Regulation, one of the EPA's former top officials on climate change argues that the Obama White House has been the biggest impediment to tough regulations. Lisa Heinzerling served as the senior climate policy counsel at the EPA from January to July 2009 and as the associate administrator of the Office of Policy from July 2009 to December 2010. Heinzerling brought serious climate chops to the EPA; before joining the administration, she was one of the lead authors in the plaintiffs' briefs in Massachusetts v. EPA, the settled court case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. She has since returned to her job as a law professor at Georgetown University.

Her piece points to the White House Office of Management of Budget —and its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in particular—as the place where tough regulations go to die. We've documented a number of proposed environmental rules have been sent to OMB for consideration and never again seen the light of day. Heinzerling points to several others that have been under "review" for years, including a list of "chemicals of concern" and rules about workplace exposure to harmful crystalline silica dust. In other cases, like new Food and Drug Administration rules on food safety, the rules were sent back from OMB significantly weakened.

It's often impossible to tell what happens to new environmental rules once they go into the OMB, which means the Obama administration is breaking its promises of transparency, Heinzerling argues. The problems at OMB also stem, she says, from an overemphasis on cost-benefit analysis for all new regulations. Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar who headed OIRA for most of Obama's first term before leaving last August, was a major proponent of this process of comparing the monetary costs and benefits of any proposed regulation. Using this to evaluate environmental regulations is a source of controversy, particularly for cases where the benefit of, say, not filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases can be difficult to quantify.

snip>

[Pirate Smile]

4. "Why the EPA might delay its carbon rules for power plants"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/18/why-the-epa-might-delay-its-carbon-rules-for-power-plants/

The problem with this proposed carbon rule, critics say, is that the EPA took a rather novel step by lumping both coal plants and gas plants together into one “source category” — essentially holding them to the same carbon standard. That’s not how this section of the Clean Air Act is usually implemented.

“A lot of people, myself included, think this approach is almost certain to get struck down in court,” says Jeffrey Holmstead, an energy-industry attorney at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP who headed up the EPA’s air division during the Bush administration.

And if the EPA’s rule for future power plants gets struck down in court, then the agency has to start all over. That could, in turn, delay its forthcoming rules for existing power plants. And, since existing coal and gas plants make up 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, any delay there could have a major environmental impact.

So that’s the basic dilemma the EPA is now facing: Does it weaken its rule on new power plants in order to avoid getting bogged down by court challenges? The downside is that revising the rule now would create a delay. But getting struck down by the courts could create an even bigger delay.
So far, the administration isn’t tipping its hand. The EPA has yet to send its rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review, and the agency says it’s still reviewing more than a million comments from industry groups, environmentalists and other members of the public.

[wtmusic]

5. The EPA seems to be going about this backwards.

Since we're talking about atmospheric carbon, the source category is irrelevant - any source that creates more than 1,000 lbs carbon/MWH should be banned.

Should be noted that Bracewell & Giuliani represents fossil fuel interests in compliance matters, so Holmstead's comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

[cprise]

6. K&R