President Obama’s top adviser on climate change said Tuesday that the administration is on track to issue strict rules for power plant emissions this summer.
Brian Deese, who has been coordinating the president’s climate change agenda, discussed the rules for existing power plants at a climate change summit at the White House Tuesday afternoon on the health effects of global warming.
“We will finalize a rule this summer,” Deese said. The rules, known as the Clean Power Plan, are the “first-ever rules for power plants” and target the plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists say that greenhouse gas emissions drive manmade climate change.
Deese’s comments come a day before the House is expected to pass legislation that would undermine the rules by giving the states the ability to opt out of compliance and would delay the rules until the courts have reviewed all challenges to them.
The emission rules, which were proposed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency, place the onus on states to reduce carbon emissions rather than individual power plants. That has not been the typical approach used by EPA to regulate the power sector. States already have sued the EPA over the issue, arguing that the agency is overstepping its authority.
Deese said the administration will not budge on the compliance timeline that the EPA has proposed. The rules will maintain a proposed emission reduction target of 30 percent by 2030, Deese said. That could be telling, as many states and organizations have called on the agency to change the rule’s interim target because it is too soon and impossible to meet.
States would be required to begin reducing emissions by 2020 to meet the 2030 goal. EPA has said it would consider adjusting the interim timeline, creating a “glide path” rather than holding firm to a specific year to begin reductions.
But it is not clear whether the administration will include that change, and Deese did not discuss the interim targets.
The Clean Power Plan is undergoing final review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is meeting with group supporting and fighting the regulations. The rules are slated to be made final in August, which will start the compliance clock for states to develop compliance plans and submit them to the EPA by June 2016.
