The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday it has stopped all work on its model climate rules meant to guide states as they implement regulations for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
EPA air chief Janet McCabe said it was ending the final-stage review process for the model rules effective immediately, and said the agency will make the unfinished rules available to the 14 states interested in applying them. Most of the remaining states are fighting the Clean Power Plan, the central regulation that the model rules would apply, in federal appeals court.
“Today, we are withdrawing the draft Model Rules and accompanying draft documents from interagency review and are making working drafts of them available to the public,” said McCabe in a Monday blog post.
“While these drafts are not final and we are not required to release them at this time, making them available now allows us to share our work to date and to respond to the states that have requested information prior to the end of the Administration,” she added. “In a letter issued today, we have notified those 14 states about the information we are making available.”
The model rules were meant to guide states looking to create a cross-state emissions market to comply the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate agenda, which President-elect Trump has vowed to repeal in his first 100 days in office. The Supreme Court halted the power plan in February until a federal appeals court has time to review the regulation.
An unprecedented ten-judge panel is currently reviewing a lawsuit by nearly 30 states against the Clean Power Plan, with a decision expected in January. The states argue that the Clean Power Plan oversteps the EPA’s authority under the law and is unconstitutional.
The power plan requires all states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions a third over the next 13 years. The emissions are blamed by many scientists for causing the Earth’s climate to warm as a result of burning fossil fuels.
“The proposed model rules highlighted straightforward pathways to adopting a trading system, making it easy for states and power plants to use emissions trading to reduce carbon pollution,” McCabe wrote in her blog post.
“We believe that the work we have done so far may be useful at this time to the states, stakeholders and members of the public who are considering or are already implementing policies and programs that would cut carbon pollution from the power sector,” she said.
