Isramart : EPA fights back over right to regulate carbon

Isramart news:


The EPA has signalled it will resist legislative moves designed to strip it of its authority to regulate carbon emissions, warning that Congress risked undermining both the work of climate scientists and the way US climate policy is perceived.

Writing in response to a letter from eight senators requesting information on the EPA's plans to regulate carbon emissions, and the likely impact of Republican senator Lisa Murkowski's attempts to engineer a vote that could remove the agency's right to regulate emissions, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson warned that reversing the endangerment finding which gives the agency the right to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act would have wide-reaching repercussions.

"A vote to violate the greenhouse-gas endangerment finding would be viewed by many as a vote to reject the scientific work of the 13 US government departments that contribute to the US Global Climate Research Program," she wrote. "It would also be viewed by many as a vote to move the United States to a position behind that of China on the issue of climate change, and more in line with the position of Saudi Arabia."

Last month, Murkowski tabled a little-used legislative measure known as a motion of disapproval, which would aim to block what she described as "the EPA's efforts to impose back-door climate regulations".

Observers said the move was likely to fail, but it has sparked off a host of separate legal challenges to the EPA's endangerment finding in recent weeks and an aide told Reuters that Murkowski could demand a vote on her bill within the next month.

Writing in her response to the senators' letter, Jackson said that if Murkowski was successful it would strip the EPA of its right to impose new fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles, resurrecting the prospect of different states imposing different vehicle standards.

She warned that a successful vote would "undo a historic agreement among states, automakers, the Federal government and other stakeholders", adding that "California and at least 13 other states… would enforce those standards within their jurisdictions, leaving the automobile industry without the explicit nationwide uniformity that it has described as important to its business.

The letter to the EPA was orchestrated by senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia, who is thought to be preparing a compromise position that would block the EPA from regulating carbon emissions for a period of two or three years, giving Congress more time to deliver specific carbon emission regulations.

"EPA actions in this area would have enormous implications on clean coal state economies, and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a Federal environmental agency, " he said in a statement.

In a signal that the EPA is responding to concerns over how new regulations could impact the recovery, Jackson confirmed that new rules requiring carbon-intensive plants to obtain permits proving they are using the most carbon-efficient technology available would be phased in gradually.

She said that no facility would be required to address greenhouse gas emissions in Clean Air Act permitting of new construction or modifications before 2011. She also revealed that the EPA was considering raising the threshold for plants covered by the new rules from the current level of 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year.

David Doniger, policy director for the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the EPA was right to defend its endangerment finding and subsequent right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

"Using the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution requires nothing different than what we've repeatedly done over the course of four decades for other kinds of pollution: follow the science, act when pollution endangers our health and welfare, and use available and affordable technology to clean up vehicles, power plants and other big pollution sources," he said. "It's practical, effective, affordable – and it works."