President-elect Joe Biden is expected to tap North Carolina’s top environment official Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to multiple news reports.
As EPA chief, Regan is poised to play a critical role in implementing Biden’s climate agenda, the most aggressive of any president. He will also be tasked with spearheading the undoing of Trump-era actions that weakened or eliminated climate and environmental regulations.
It’s likely the EPA under Biden will seek to ramp up greenhouse gas emissions controls for certain sectors of the economy beyond what the Obama administration instituted. For example, Biden has pledged to issue stricter fuel economy standards for passenger cars and limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas production.
Biden’s EPA could face bigger hurdles, though, in trying to issue carbon emissions standards for power plants similar to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Any regulatory approach from the EPA must face a conservative majority in the Supreme Court that is likely to take a narrower view of the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Regan, 44, has served as secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality since January 2017. Previously, he worked at the Environmental Defense Fund on climate and energy issues in the Southeast region. He is also familiar with the EPA, having served in the agency’s air quality and energy programs as a career staffer in the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Regan’s name only emerged as a top contender in the past few days. California air chief Mary Nichols, widely considered one of the country’s most experienced climate regulators, was seen as the front-runner to lead the Biden EPA, but her potential nomination received backlash in recent weeks from several left-wing and California environmental groups.
Those groups told the Biden transition team that Nichols has ignored the concerns of minority and lower-income people who bear the brunt of pollution, causing the incoming administration to reconsider.
If confirmed, Regan would be the first black man to hold the post of EPA administrator and the second black person to lead the agency.
Regan’s expected nomination is receiving praise from environmental groups, who see him as someone who can restore the EPA to its pre-Trump stature.
“Regan has gone to bat for North Carolinians against polluters, and now the rest of the country will get to benefit from his leadership,” said Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations at the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters. Earlier this year, Regan helped negotiate a tough settlement agreement with Duke Energy, which resulted in the utility agreeing to undertake the nation’s largest coal ash cleanup.
Picking a state environmental regulator to be the EPA chief has precedent in the Obama administration. Both of former President Barack Obama’s administrators, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, were former state regulators, in New Jersey and Connecticut, respectively.
“It’s really, really important to have someone who has recent state regulatory experience. That experience as truly a co-regulator is important if we want to see additional environmental progress and a spirit of cooperative federalism,” said Clint Woods, a former Trump EPA air official who also previously ran the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies.
“There’s a real concern that some people’s view of cooperative environmental federalism is only for states that are politically preferred, and it’s really important to have folks that have a different perspective or are willing to think creatively about how you can have bottom-up state solutions and flexible federal regulations,” added Woods, now a regulations policy fellow at the free market group Americans for Prosperity.
Regan’s pick also may be relatively uncontroversial politically, whereas Nichols was bound to receive pushback from Republican senators who have blasted California’s aggressive climate policies.
“He’s not bound by preconceived notions. Regan’s return to EPA is the next logical step for such a bright career,” said Scott Segal, a partner at Bracewell LLP who works with energy clients. “Regan understands that tough environmental goals tempered with economic and technological reality produce the best approach on everything from climate change to more local problems.”
However, not every group is pleased with the selection. Friends of the Earth Action, which also pushed back strongly on Nichols, said in a tweet that Regan “has failed to listen to the interests of North Carolinians, supporting the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline and ignoring deforestation concerns.”
