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EPA proposes repeal of Clean Power Plan
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has issued proposed rulemaking which would repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.
In an Oct. 10 statement EPA said that the proposal is based on a determination that regulations under the Clean Power Plan exceeded the agency’s statutory authority.
Implementation of the Clean Power Plan, a series of EPA regulations implemented in 2015, was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court Feb. 9 pending decisions in multiple appeals of the plan, which proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing U.S. power generating facilities by 32 percent of their 2005 levels by 2030, and required states to formulate plans to achieve the target.
Alaska was exempt from having to implement the plan.
“The Obama administration pushed the bounds of their authority so far with the CPP that the Supreme Court issued a historic stay of the rule, preventing its devastating effects to be imposed on the American people while the rule is being challenged in court,” Pruitt said in the agency’s press release.
CO2 the issue EPA published proposed Clean Power Plan regulations in mid-2014, aimed at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power generation facilities as a pollutant under terms of the Clean Air Act.
When the final rule was issued in 2015, Alaska and Hawaii were exempted. EPA said there was a lack of sufficient information or analytical tools for measuring the means for achieving emissions reductions in those states. The territories of Guam and Puerto Rico were exempted for the same reason.
The final plan increased the overall target for emissions reductions from 30 percent to 32 percent and eliminated improved efficiency in electricity use as one of four building blocks for emission reduction because, EPA said at the time, regulation of energy efficiency did not fall within traditional interpretation of the Clean Air Act. The final rule included three building blocks for reducing CO2 emissions: improving the efficiency of existing coal-fired power plants; substituting use of high-efficiency combined-cycle natural gas fired power plants for use of steam turbines; and increasing use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Clean Air Act EPA said Oct. 10 that the CPP “was premised on a novel and expansive view of Agency authority that the Trump administration now proposes to determine is inconsistent with the Clean Air Act.”
Pruitt said EPA would “respect the limits of statutory authority.” He said the CPP “ignored states’ concerns and eroded longstanding and important partnerships that are a necessary part of achieving positive environmental outcomes.”
EPA said the CPP “was issued pursuant to a novel and expansive view of authority under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act,” requiring actions that the agency said were “outside the fence line” compared to rules which EPA had traditionally issued which were based on measures relevant to a particular facility, which the agency said were referred to as “inside the fence line” measures.
“Prior to the CPP being issued, every single Section 111 rule on the books, including a handful of existing source rules and around 100 new-source rules, obeyed this limit,” the agency said.
EPA said that insofar as CPP departs from this traditional limit on the agency’s authority “under an ‘inside the fence line’ interpretation, EPA is proposing to repeal it.”
There is a 60-day public comment period on the proposed changes.
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