The Environmental Protection Agency brings its climate-rule road show to Washington this week, seeking to hear from states and others on the controversial plan it would impose if states don’t comply with its rules cutting carbon emissions from power plants.
EPA hits the nation’s capital Wednesday for a two-day round of meetings to hear from groups for and against the emission rules, after finishing marathon sessions in Pittsburgh and Denver. The EPA then will travel to Atlanta for a session that lasts through Friday afternoon.
The meetings are meant to let EPA officials hear from the public on carbon emission rules that undergird the Clean Power Plan, the linchpin in President Obama’s climate change agenda. The plan would cut man-made greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels that many scientists blame for global warming.
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The Clean Power Plan requires states to lower emissions a third by 2030, and states have to begin filing compliance plans in less than a year. The federal plan acts as a backstop for states that do not submit their own plans. Many Republicans and industry groups say it is a proxy for establishing a federal cap-and-trade system.
The federal plan would institute an emissions trading system akin to a cap-and-trade program, which Democrats failed to pass in 2009 when they held the majority in Congress.
Proponents say the federal plan is one of the reasons that some of the 27 states that are opposing the Clean Power Plan in federal appeals court are, at the same time, developing plans to submit plans to the EPA next year. State officials say they would rather have a say in how they comply than have a federal program imposed on them.
“The public hearings are designed to listen to comments on the proposed federal plan and model trading rules for the Clean Power Plan and are the next step in implementing the final Clean Power Plan,” said EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison in an email. “EPA is committed to helping states realize the benefits of the Clean Power Plan — and that’s what these hearings are about: hearing from the public about these important tools for putting the Clean Power Plan into action.”
Although the EPA says it has engaged in “years of unprecedented outreach and public engagement,” the official EPA speakers list at the Pittsburgh and Colorado meetings was dominated by environmentalists such as the Sierra Club, with a sprinkling of detractors.
The West Virginia Coal Association addressed the meeting Friday in Pittsburgh. The group has been an opponent of the rules as an affront to states’ rights and a mining industry job killer.
The National Mining Association is lobbying states not to comply with the Clean Power Plan, as the group and the 27 states have asked for a stay from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, blocking the rules from taking effect until the cases are heard over the next year.
The Clean Power Plan is “fair, flexible and designed to strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy,” according to Harrison. The agency is taking formal comments in writing on the federal plan through Jan. 21.
The EPA is simultaneously vetting its Clean Energy Incentive Program, which was dropped into the Clean Power Plan when it was finalized in August with no input from stakeholders.
The agency began a series of conference calls with environmental justice groups and others representing low-income residents on the incentive program, which it will continue through Dec. 1.
The program is meant to provide incentives to states to invest in solar, wind and other energy resources with little or no emissions ahead of when states must begin lowering emissions by 2022. It also plans to provide additional incentives to “encourage energy efficiency investments in low-income communities.”
The first conference call was held Nov. 10 to focus on “hearing ideas” on how to structure the program from project providers, including energy efficiency, wind and solar providers and electric utilities in low-income communities, according to the EPA website.
Calls held Nov. 23-Dec. 1 will hear from environmental justice and community groups, tribes, local and state governments, environmental groups, and power plant owners that may have to close their plants due to the Clean Power Plan.
