Blog

On September 20, 2013 the EPA proposed new source performance standards for greenhouse gas emissions for new power plants.  Although the agency repackaged and fine-tuned an earlier proposal, issued in April 2012, it continues to hold the coal industry’s feet to the fire.  The proposal makes clear that new coal-fired power capacity cannot be built […]

Almost every new power plant that the electric utility industry has built in recent years has been a natural gas powered plant. Industry rarely builds new coal-fired power plants anymore because gas has become much cheaper than coal. That is a very good thing. Absent rather expensive carbon capture and storage, new coal-fired power plants […]

This entire week, the coal industry and electric utilities have been decrying the EPA’s proposed rule, released today, limiting CO2 emissions from new coal-fired power plants. Experts predict the proposed rule will place limits on coal-fired power plants that will make them impossible to operate in the absence of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, […]

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was “withdrawing” from White House review its draft final guidance that sought to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act. The guidance had been languishing at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which oversees the White House regulatory review process, for 575 days, even though Executive […]

Everything’s upside down. Last week a Democratic president urged a military strike in the Middle East while Republicans dithered about quagmires. Tomorrow, a subpanel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will launch its first climate change hearing in years and hardly any Obama administration official is willing to show up.  Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Ky), […]

In a much-anticipated opinion, a district court judge on Friday upheld the Bay TMDL, or pollution diet, against a challenge brought by the American Farm Bureau. The decision affirms that EPA’s Chesapeake Bay efforts have been squarely within its authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA), not to mention the various consent decrees, memoranda of […]

Earlier this week, Roll Call published an op-ed by CPR Scholars Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy Wagner entitled, “Toxics Control Bill Will Handcuff EPA.” The piece concludes: In our decades of research and writing on tort law and environmental regulation, we have never seen a pre-emption provision that intrudes more deeply into the civil litigation system at […]

Late last month, the Department of Energy proposed long overdue energy efficiency standards for commercial refrigeration units and published them for public comment yesterday. The rules, which had been held up at OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for almost two years will resultin savings of over $28 billion for businesses over the […]

I agree with David Owen’s recent blog post that David Adelman’s article, The Collective Origins of Toxic Air Pollution: Implications for Greenhouse Gas Trading and Toxic Hotspots, makes significant contributions to our awareness of the sources of toxic pollution and our collective responsibility for reducing emissions.  He focuses on the distributional implications of GHG trading […]