After this summer’s anti-climatic end to federal climate change legislation, some thought that perhaps there would be a temporary end of the discussion of climate change regulation. However, recent weather events (wildfires in Russia, floods in Pakistan and an ice sheet breaking off Greenland) and extreme heat have reinvigorated the debate.
Here is some highlights
In my tenure at Ohio EPA, no issue was as vexing as Environmental Justice (EJ). In a nutshell, there is a legitimate issue behind the concept of EJ- low income and minorities are exposed to more pollution. Here is how EPA presents the EJ issues:
Fair Treatment means that no group of people should bear a
There was a lot of anticipation this summer about the scope of the energy bill coming out of the U.S. Senate. Would the Senate try and tackle climate change? Would it develop a national renewable portfolio standard?
The bill was released yesterday and the answer was "no" on both accounts.
The White House kept a glimmer of hope that
U.S. EPA has released its CAIR replacement program called the "Transport Rule." In a previous post I discussed EPA’s efforts under the Transport Rule to address the Court’s ruling striking down the CAIR rule. After listening to a presentation by EPA, the structure of the Transport Rule is a little clearer.
The major issue identified by the Court
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U.S. EPA released is long awaited replacement rule for the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) which was the controversial cap and trade program for coal-fired utilities. In December of 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled CAIR exceeded EPA’s regulatory authority and ordered the Agency to develop an new proposal.
Originally, the
President Obama is convening a meeting tomorrow to explore all possible alternatives that would lead to passage of a climate bill before the midterm elections. The most likely alternative that will receive consideration is a much narrower cap that would only be applied to utilities. Under this approach, the provisions covering large industrial emitters and
In a very close vote 53-47, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution designed to block U.S. EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases utilizing its existing authority under the Clean Air Act. Six Democrats supported the Republican effort to block EPA. Republicans needed 51 votes to effectively block or delay EPA’s efforts. Now everyone is offering their opinions as
As reported in the New York Times, Senator Murkowski announced that the Senate will vote June 10th on her resolution to block EPA from implementing climate change regulation under the Clean Air Act. The proposal was announced this past December and the vote follows finalization of EPA regulations that will initiate regulation of
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Greenhouse Gas Regulation Commences January 2, 2011 without Legislation
On May 13, 2010, EPA finalized its regulatory approach for control greenhouse gases (GHGs) from large stationary sources. As discussed in prior posts, the statutory thresholds for triggering EPA’s New Source Review program (NSR) are 100/250 tons per year of a regulated Clean Air Act pollutant.
As
Last week, Senator Voinovich drew attention and criticism for proposing a significant expansion of the preemption language in the forthcoming bi-partisan climate bill to be introduced by Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham. Failure to carefully consider the preemption language and possible additional limits on other regulatory authority would be short-sighted.
One of the main reasons for Congress