The Environmental Protection Agency has released a rule setting a new threshold for the agency to meet before it regulates greenhouse gas emissions from an industry, a last-ditch effort to protect businesses from strict climate mandates.
The rulemaking, which will be published Wednesday, would require the EPA to find an individual industry, such as the power sector or oil and gas operators, collectively emits at least 3% of total U.S. greenhouse gases before setting emissions controls.
Only the electric power sector would currently satisfy that requirement, according to the EPA’s own calculations. All other sectors, including oil and gas producers, petroleum refineries, and industrial facilities, fall under that threshold and would therefore be considered “insignificant,” the EPA rule said.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, in a statement, said the rule “ensures covered entities, such as power plants and other large-scale manufacturers, are provided a clear view of regulatory requirements and expectations.”
Such a threshold requirement, however, could pose challenges to the incoming Biden administration, which has promised an aggressive climate change agenda that includes strict controls on emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from the oil and gas sector.
The Trump EPA already eliminated direct federal regulation of oil and gas methane emissions, an action the Biden team would have to undo to set new emissions controls. However, this new action could add another barrier for the Biden team.
“This unlawful rule is a transparent attempt to erect roadblocks to protecting public health and the environment for the new administration,” said Jay Duffy, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force. The environmental group called the Trump administration’s rule a “last-minute attempt to cement its legacy as climate-deniers” and called it “absurd” to conclude only power plants emissions are high enough to warrant regulation.
In its rulemaking, the EPA said it chose 3% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as the threshold because anything less than that would have a minuscule effect on reducing overall emissions.
Eliminating oil and gas emissions, for example, “would only generate an additional hypothetical global mean temperature reduction of less than 0.01 [degrees Celsius] and even smaller source categories correspondingly contribute less to global temperature,” the EPA wrote.
In setting the threshold to trigger regulation, the EPA also affirmed that coal-fired power plants are subject to greenhouse gas regulations. The Trump administration had initially proposed in 2018 to scrap Obama-era requirements that any new coal-fired power plant install partial carbon capture technology. The EPA said in a news release, however, that it isn’t addressing that piece of its proposal in its new action.
