More than 1.6 million comments both supporting and opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants were filed before Monday’s deadline.
The EPA had extended the comment period 45 days, honoring the request of a majority of senators along with states, industry groups and others who said they needed more time to analyze the June proposal. The proposal, which aims to slash power-sector emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, has been the focus of lobbying and political battles that will heat up in January when a Republican-led Congress puts the plan and the EPA in its crosshairs.
“We’ve heard that the carbon reductions targets we proposed are too tough and we’ve heard that they’re not tough enough. And much, much more. What we know for sure is that people care about this issue and we know we have a lot to consider as we work toward a final rule,” EPA Air and Radiation Administrator Janet McCabe said in a Monday blog post.
Comments ran the gamut. Most touched on the legal framework the EPA is using to force emissions reductions across the power sector, with opponents saying the agency stretched a provision of the Clean Air Act and boosters backing the approach. In a rare show of consensus among states, officials from the likes of California, Texas, Massachusetts and Louisiana said the EPA’s interim targets for reductions by 2020 were too strict.
From a legal perspective, the main issue is the interpretation of a Clean Air Act section the EPA is using to curb emissions beyond individual power plants. Some environmental groups said the EPA isn’t being aggressive enough in addressing climate change and pushed for a more stringent target.
“EPA’s plan is an appropriate exercise of the agency’s authority under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. However, the urgency of the climate crisis and the imperative for the U.S. to lead global efforts to reduce climate pollution demands stronger action,” the Sierra Club and Earthjustice said in their combined comment.
The EPA has sought reductions through four “building blocks:” improving efficiency at power plants; increasing use of natural gas-fired power; expanding renewable power; and increasing energy efficiency.
Opponents contend that tactic amounts to overreach and that reductions must occur at smokestacks.
The Edison Electric Institute, the industry group that represents investor-owned utilities, said the “systems” approach EPA devised invites legal questions because it requires states, utilities and consumers that have tenuous direct connections to power plants to meet the goals.
“Never before have the [best system of emission reduction] provisions of the [Clean Air Act] been applied to authorize EPA to regulate states and markets in this way,” the group said in its comment.
The group also echoed the concerns of many states by saying the EPA is requiring too steep of cuts too fast.
States must achieve a bulk of their emissions cuts by 2020 under interim goals laid out by EPA, and many worry that doesn’t leave enough time to comply. Much of that would come through switching from coal-fired power to natural gas, which some states fear could mothball relatively recent investments and raise costs for consumers.
The Southern States Energy Board, a group of 16 state governors and lawmakers with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, noted that states would have between one and two years to meet the interim 2020 targets after EPA approves their implementation plans. The group asked the EPA to issue a new proposal that would avoid shuttering recently built coal-fired power plants, focus reductions on the power plants, and to honor action already being taken by states.
A clutch of 13 Western states also pressed the EPA for more flexible 2020 targets but, unlike their Southern brethren, they didn’t fight the EPA’s interpretation that emissions could be required beyond the power plant.
Instead, they pressed for more options in developing regional or multi-state systems to comply with the proposal, as the states noted electricity may be produced in one state but consumed in another. Some states also might want to submit both an individual plan and also participate in a multi-state one, say, to better account for renewable energy generation and consumption.
“Not all states will want, or be able, to enter into joint plans covering every aspect of their programs,” the states’ environmental and energy officials wrote. “But many states may be interested in plans which, at a minimum, allow more efficient accounting, and credit, for the effects of renewable energy and/or energy efficiency across state lines.”
Energy and environmental officials from 14 West and East Coast states also backed the EPA’s proposal, though they also took issue with the agency’s near-term 2020 goals and said it should offer a range of options for regional and multi-state plans.
“We encourage EPA to provide states additional flexibility to meet the interim goal through allowing states the options to credit certain reductions achieved prior to 2020 and to begin the interim compliance period before 2020,” the state officials wrote Monday to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
