Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said the Obama administration won’t gin up regulatory efforts beyond what is legal to meet climate change goals established under a non-binding accord reached last week with China, but emissions of methane could be targeted next.
“We are not going to craft a final rule that is trying to achieve a certain level or a certain timing that is dictated by the climate goal,” McCarthy, speaking of the agency’s proposal to limit carbon emissions from power plants, said at a Washington event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “We are not going to measure ourselves by those goalposts. Those goalposts were set on a variety of factors.”
McCarthy said that while the deal with China calls for ambitious cuts from the U.S., they are achievable. She didn’t rule out the possible regulation of methane, which is released during the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process, coming from an interagency evaluation on how to curb emissions of the potent, short-lived heat-trapping gas.
“We are looking clearly at both regulation and voluntary actions, and commitments of the business community as opportunities for reduction,” McCarthy said, noting that the methane plan is expected to come out this fall.
President Obama committed the United States to curbing greenhouse gas emissions at least 26 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025 in a bilateral deal with China. Chinese President Xi Jinping said his nation’s emissions would peak and then decline around 2030, and that the world’s top emitter would get 20 percent of its power from non-fossil fuel sources by then.
McCarthy reiterated that the White House arrived at the U.S. figure through an accounting of current and potential regulatory actions. A proposed rule for existing power plants that aims to slash power sector emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 is one of those rules, McCarthy noted.
Methane presents one of the biggest opportunities for emissions cuts. It’s the largest unregulated greenhouse gas in the U.S., accounting for 9 percent of emissions, and its climate-changing effect is about 25 times greater than carbon dioxide.
But oil and gas drillers will fight methane regulations, which they contend would raise costs. They say the industry has improved its practices to limit “fugitive” methane emissions released during the fracking process, but environmentalists contend that even a 3 percent leakage rate would erase the climate benefits of using natural gas.
Some of the policies needed to meet the U.S. goal are already facing resistance. Conservatives, business and some states have said that a proposed rule governing emissions from power plants will raise energy costs and strangle the economy. The Republican-led Congress set to take control in January has signaled that it plans to handcuff some of the EPA’s regulatory programs.
McCarthy said, however, that she was “very confident” Obama would back the agency if any legislation — including perhaps spending bills — that sought to undercut EPA hit his desk.
“There is no one banking on us getting stopped,” McCarthy said.
