EPA chief looks to reassure coal state senators on greenhouse gas regulations

EPA
Administrator Lisa Jackson said regulation of greenhouse gases from power
plants and other industrial facilities won’t kick in this year in a letter to
eight Senate Democrats who had expressed worries over the issue in a letter to the EPA on Friday.

Jackson’s
quick effort to offer reassurances suggests the Obama administration is
attempting to ward off Democratic support for legislation that would block
planned EPA climate change rules entirely.

Jackson
said that no stationary sources will be required to obtain Clean Air Act
permits to cover their greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.

{mosads}Jackson
also said that EPA would phase-in permit requirements for large sources
starting in 2011. But during the first half of 2011, only facilities that must
already apply for permits to cover their non-greenhouse gas emissions will have
to address the greenhouse gases in their applications.

EPA last year proposed that the first wave of climate rules for
industrial facilities would cover only sites that emit at least 25,000 tons of
greenhouse gases annually.

But Jackson’s letter backs off a bit – she states that between 2011 and
2013, the threshold for permitting would be “substantially higher” than the
25,000 ton level.

“In any event, EPA does not intend to subject the smallest sources to
Clean Air Act permitting for greenhouse-gas emissions any sooner than 2016,”
she wrote.

Jackson’s letter is a response to an inquiry Friday from Commerce
Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Finance Committee Chairman Max
Baucus (Mont.), and Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Mark Begich (Alaska), Robert
Byrd (W.Va.), Robert Casey (Penn.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Carl Levin
(Mich.).

In a letter to Jackson, they said they had “serious economic and energy
security concerns” about the planned emissions rules, and asked several
questions about the timing and scope of the measures.

Rockefeller also said he’s planning a bill to suspend EPA’s regulatory
authority while Congress works on broader climate and energy legislation.

The most immediate threat to EPA is a resolution that Sen. Lisa
Murkowski (R-Alaska) may bring to the floor next month that would overturn
EPA’s “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases threaten human health and
welfare. The finding is a legal precursor to regulating heat-trapping
emissions.

Nullifying the endangerment finding would also spell the end for far
less controversial rules to curb emissions from automobiles that EPA plans to
finalize next month for model years 2012-2016. Jackson said that would harm the
auto industry by allowing states to move ahead with their own plans.

“The impacts of that result would be significant,” Jackson wrote. “In
particular, it would undo an historic agreement among states, automakers, the
federal government, and other stakeholders.”

She noted that California and over a dozen other states that have
adopted California’s auto emissions plans would likely enforce the state
measures, rather than deferring to the federal rule as planned. This would
leave the auto industry “without the explicit nationwide uniformity that it has
described as important to its business,” Jackson wrote.