Former officials of both Republican and Democratic administrations are voicing skepticism over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules to cut down on emissions from power plants.
The EPA’s proposed rules, known as the Clean Power Plan, have drawn strident opposition from the GOP and coal states. The rules are the centerpiece of President Obama’s plan to address climate change.
Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the EPA under former President George W. Bush, told a group of utility executives Thursday that she envisions the emission rules getting locked up in a court battle — possibly for years — forcing Congress to create a national energy policy to deal with carbon emissions.
“The reg[ulation] is going to be the dominating thing [to] frame the discussion going forward, but it’s going to end up in court,” Whitman said. “So, ideally we need a national energy policy and we need something out of Congress.”
Whitman, who also served as New Jersey governor, made the comments at the Nuclear Energy Assembly, the nuclear power industry’s annual conference in Washington. The former EPA administrator is co-chairwoman of the CASE Energy Coalition, a group that educates on the benefits of nuclear energy as a zero-emission resource.
She says the issue likely will not be resolved until a new administration is in office.
“I believe we are going to see action after we get through the next presidential race,” Whitman added. “We will see some action on carbon. How that happens, whether it’s a revenue-neutral tax on carbon, I couldn’t predict.”
A carbon tax has been floated as a likely alternative to regulating greenhouse gases through EPA emissions regulations. Most scientists blame greenhouse gas emissions for driving manmade climate change.
Dan Reicher, former assistant secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton, said the EPA rule has a “decent chance” of surviving court review. Nevertheless, he raised questions about the regulations being the best way to lower carbon emissions. Reicher addressed the executives on a panel with Whitman.
“I said ‘decent prospect,’ I didn’t say great prospect,” Reicher said. “I think there really is some likelihood that it’s going to get held up in court.”
Fourteen states and the coal industry have sued the EPA over the regulations in federal appeals court, arguing that the agency does not have the authority to move forward under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA emission rules establish state-specific reduction targets, requiring states to begin limiting their emissions in 2020, with an end goal of 30 percent reductions by 2030. The rules are unprecedented, and being challenged, because instead of regulating individual power plants, they direct states to reduce their emissions.
“This is a complicated way to be addressing carbon emissions,” said Reicher. “This is a provision of the Clean Air Act that wasn’t designed to take on something quite like this. But it is the option we have landed on.”
Reicher added that a carbon tax would be a better alternative. He said it would spur development of low-emission resources more effectively and at a lower cost.
“I do think a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the smartest way to go. It’s market based, and it will allow for the kind of competition among zero-carbon sources that will really get us down the road furthest and at the lowest cost,” Reicher said.
If the Clean Power Plan “does get stopped, I agree we may be back to Congress under a new president and a new Congress. We may be taking this up in a few years,” Reicher said. He added that he is “hopeful that the learning under the Clean Power Plan” will better inform Congress, where “maybe there is a deal struck.”
Phil Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, an economic think tank focused on environmental policy, also noted that “many people think that we have to get beyond [the rules],” because the regulations won’t be adequate to address carbon reductions in the long run.
“While [the rules] do represent a significant cut in U.S. emissions, the truth is nobody thinks this is adequate in the long term, so some additional policy is going to have to proceed. Or, we are going to have a really ugly, constant ratcheting down through this very complicated regulatory process,” Sharp said.
He noted that the climate change bill debated by Congress in 2009 prohibited the EPA from pursuing its own carbon regulations in lieu of the cap-and-trade program the bill would have implemented. The bill passed the House, but stalled in the Senate.
