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COAL COMPANIES’ CLIMATE FIGHT COMPLICATES EPA’S POWER RULE DEFENSE: Coal mining companies and free market think tanks aren’t letting it go.
They want to pursue the legal fight over whether the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate power plants’ carbon emissions. And they’re holding on, even as many of their former utility and other industry allies have moved past it and the EPA doesn’t seem to want to engage, at least for now.
The EPA now, in the same lawsuit, has to defend its replacement to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan against environmental groups for being too weak — and against coal companies and free market groups for being too stringent.
The dual-track lawsuit is complicating what the EPA wants the court to think is a relatively simple legal decision, legal experts tell Abby.
The EPA wants the federal courts to rubber stamp its rule — and its interpretation of how much the Clean Air Act allows the agency to regulate power plants’ carbon — quickly.
In fact, the agency has asked the D.C. Circuit to hear oral arguments in the lawsuit in April, just nine months after the suit against the EPA’s Clean Power Plan replacement was filed. That means the EPA could have a decision from the court before the 2020 election.
It’s a schedule environmental attorneys tell Abby would be incredibly quick and unprecedented in the legal world, particularly for a case with so many parties and so many issues at stake.
And coal companies’ lingering fight makes a logistics headache, which could slow down the case: It’s putting environmental groups and Democratic-led states on both sides of the lawsuit.
Even as they’re challenging the EPA’s replacement rule for being too weak, states and environmental groups are intervening to support the agency’s authority to regulate power plants’ emissions at all.
Coal mining companies and free-market groups say the EPA can’t regulate power plants’ carbon emissions, because of statutory prohibitions and because it hasn’t proven those emissions are enough of a problem.
“EPA has never found domestic coal power plant greenhouse gas emissions cause or contribute significantly to air pollution that is reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” coal mining giant Westmoreland wrote in a legal filing late Monday.
Environmental groups say they’re intervening because they don’t want to leave just the Trump EPA to defend the agency’s authority.
“When you have an agency that refuses to even say climate change in its rulemakings, you don’t want to assume they will give a full-throated defense of their authority under the Clean Air Act,” Jay Duffy, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, told Abby.
“We wouldn’t want to rest on our laurels and not make sure that a really vigorous defense of the mission of the Clean Air Act was put before the Court,” he added.
It’s telling that the EPA didn’t try to go after its authority: The EPA replacement rule is much narrower than the Obama administration’s, but the agency doesn’t give up its climate authority completely as some of Trump’s coal industry supporters would have liked.
And many in industry who’d challenged the EPA’s authority before have let that argument go in favor of a rule they see as more reasonable.
“EPA’s out to make law here,” Joseph Goffman, a former EPA air official during the Obama administration, told Abby. That law, he added, is to tie the hands of a future administration, not to do away with the agency’s authority completely.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
PROTECTING CUSTOMERS FROM WILDFIRES BY CUTTING THEIR POWER: Pacific Gas & Electric is “proactively” shutting off power in portions of 34 counties in northern and central California starting today amid severe wind conditions. The blackouts could impact electric service for nearly 800,000 customers, the utility said Tuesday.
“We understand the effects this event will have on our customers and appreciate the public’s patience as we do what is necessary to keep our communities safe and reduce the risk of wildfire,” Michael Lewis, PG&Es senior vice president of electric operations, said in a statement.
PG&E’s power shutdown comes as the utility is grappling with its future amid what many have called the first “climate change bankruptcy.” The utility filed in January for bankruptcy protections as it faced billions in liability claims due to deadly wildfires in the state.
WARREN AND MARKEY INTRODUCE BILL TO HOBBLE LNG EXPORTS: Democrat Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey released legislation Tuesday to ban infrastructure used to export liquified natural gas.
The legislation would bar the construction of natural gas compressor stations that facilitate gas exports.
Warren has been among the most aggressive presidential candidates in vowing to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels. She has pledged to end fracking for natural gas to have fossil-fuel-free electricity by 2035.
Markey has moved to show his climate bonafides as he faces a primary challenge from Joe Kennedy as he seeks re-election. He introduced the Green New Deal resolution in the Senate and has also authored legislation that would reimpose the crude oil export ban lifted by Congress in 2015.
WARREN UNVEILS ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PLAN: Warren unveiled her latest in a series of plans to combat climate change Wednesday, this one focused on environmental justice.
“Industrial pollution has been concentrated in communities of color due to decades of discrimination and racism—and a system that puts corporate profits before people. We need big, structural change, focused on and led by members of those communities,” Warren said in a series of Twitter posts about her plan, which she posted on Medium.
She pledges to direct one-third of her climate investments into the most vulnerable communities on the “frontlines of climate change,” which she says would funnel at least $1 trillion into these areas over the next decade. She’d impose “steep fines” on corporate polluters, particularly in cases of environmental discrimination, which Warren would reinvest in areas that suffered damage.
Warren also wants to provide job training and guaranteed wage and benefit parity for fossil fuel workers transitioning into new industries.
COAL COMPANIES SPARED FOR NOW FROM OBAMA-ERA ROYALTIES RULE: A federal district court judge in Wyoming ruled late Tuesday coal companies temporarily won’t have to comply with the regulation — which alters how fees on coal, oil, and natural gas extracted on federal lands are calculated.
The 2016 royalties rule has been caught up in litigation for years. The Interior Department had formally repealed the rule in 2017, but a federal judge in 2019 sided with California, New Mexico, and several environmental groups to overturn the repeal.
The pause for coal companies now comes in large part because Wyoming Judge Scott Skavdahl wrote he shares industry’s concerns that Obama-era changes to the fees could be unlawful. The burden on coal companies for having to comply with the rule, particularly if it’s ultimately struck down, would be “immense,” Skavdahl wrote.
Oil and gas companies aren’t so lucky, though. Skavdahl wrote he didn’t share the same concerns for the oil and gas royalties, and those companies will still have to comply with the Obama rule as it makes its way through the courts.
EXPERT PANEL SPURNED BY EPA TO MEET ANYWAY: EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded the panel last year, despite objections from the EPA’s own science advisers that they wouldn’t have enough resources to complete a review of air pollutants’ health impacts on time.
That review will ultimately shape the EPA’s decision about whether to strengthen or alter federal air quality limits for fine particle pollution, which EPA and other scientists have linked to respiratory and heart problems.
The disbanded panel of scientists, however, has reconvened and will meet Thursday and Friday to examine the latest science and whether the current federal air quality standards are strong enough.
30 CITIES’ EMISSIONS REACH THEIR HIGHEST POINT: Analysis finds that 30 of the world’s largest cities — including major U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. — have seen a peak in their emissions, according to the climate group C40 Cities.
The analysis comes as mayors meet in Copenhagen for a climate summit hosted by C40. While there, a coalition of more than 90 mayors announced support for a “global Green New Deal” alongside other activists, including New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
However, the list of global cities peaking emissions centers on those in the Western world. Notably absent from the list so far are cities in developing nations like China and India where emissions are poised to continue to grow in the near-term.
The Rundown
New York Times: On climate change, Biden has a record and a plan. Young activists want more.
Reuters Trump’s fast-tracking of oil pipelines hits legal roadblocks
CNN: Senior Interior official denied there was an ozone hole and compared undocumented immigrants to cancer
New York Times As sea levels rise so do ghost forests
Reuters: Kim Kardashian praises climate activist Thunberg and hopes for meeting
BBC News Nobel chemistry prize: Lithium-ion battery scientists honoured
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | OCTOBER 9
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