Marlo Lewis

Today on E&E TV, Roger Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin and former EPA general counsel, discussed some of the legal and economic issues raised by EPA’s carbon “pollution” rule for existing power plants, which the agency released Monday (June 2, 2014).

The rule requires states, on average, to achieve a 30% reduction in power-plant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. It allows states to meet their respective targets through four main strategies: increase the efficiency of coal electric generation, substitute natural gas generation for coal generation, substitute renewable and nuclear generation for fossil-fuel generation, and reduce electric demand by industry and other end-users. To implement those strategies, states may use various policy options including cap-and-trade, renewable electricity mandates, and demand-side management programs.

In this brief post, I will state the gist of some of interviewer Monica Trauzzi’s questions and excerpt from Martella’s responses.*

Q: How much flexibility is EPA actually giving states to comply with the rule?

RM: On the one hand, the word that was probably used the most during Administrator McCarthy’s presentation [on Monday] was “flexibility,” and she kept her promise to give the states as much flexibility as possible. And from one perspective that’s true. I think EPA’s basically saying any way you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we’ll find a way to make it work. But what she didn’t discuss as much was the other side of that coin, which is the numeric targets that EPA’s set for individual states, now, I think 49 states, state-by-state numeric targets. In some cases those are extremely aggressive, not flexible, and EPA makes it very clear these will be mandatory, binding targets on these states. [click to continue…]

Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way.  It was a means, not an end.  And I’m going to be looking for other means to address this problem. – President Barack Obama, Nov. 3, 2010

President Obama uttered those words the day after Democrats lost the House — a defeat in no small part due to their support for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), better known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

The President did look for other ways of “skinning the cat.” For example, in his 2011 State of the Union Speech, he called on Congress to enact a national clean energy standard. By some strange coincidence, the policy would have restructured the electric power sector very much along the lines of the “basic” case in the Energy Information Administration’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill.

What President Obama neglected to mention, though, is that he – or his EPA – would also attempt to skin the cat in the same old ways.

EPA’s carbon “pollution” rules put back into play the potpourri of anti-fossil fuel policies that were core strategies of the Waxman-Markey bill.

Team Obama’s political chutzpah is off-the-charts.

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The controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline is totally artificial, a fabrication of green politics.

Something like 2.5 million miles of oil and gas pipelines already crisscross the lower forty-eight.

How in the world would adding another 875 miles (the orange line in the map below) to that vast network push it over some kind of national interest ‘tipping point,’ endangering the economy or ecology of the U.S.? [click to continue…]

In her speech today announcing EPA’s plan to cut power-sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said agency critics who warn of dire economic impacts “sound like a broken record.” But what is more repetitive — or more misleading — than trying to sell EPA’s power grab as a childhood asthma remedy?

McCarthy began her speech as follows:

About a month ago, I took a trip to the Cleveland Clinic. I met a lot of great people, but one stood out—even if he needed to stand on a chair to do it. Parker Frey is 10 years old. He’s struggled with severe asthma all his life. His mom said despite his challenges, Parker’s a tough, active kid—and a stellar hockey player.
 
But sometimes, she says, the air is too dangerous for him to play outside. In the United States of America, no parent should ever have that worry. . . .Rising temperatures bring more smog, more asthma, and longer allergy seasons. If your kid doesn’t use an inhaler, consider yourself a lucky parent, because 1 in 10 children in the U.S. suffers from asthma.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 11 children in the U.S. had asthma in 2010. That is a remarkable fact. I had severe asthma as a child, so was sensitized to the issue. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, lots of other kids knew I had asthma — because hardly anyone else had it. In six years of summer camp in the New Hampshire woods, I had frequent asthma attacks — and was the only camper so afflicted. That was in the 1960s.

What happened since then? For one thing, childhood asthma rates increased dramatically. But during the same period, the air got dramatically cleaner.

Source: EPA

Yes, heat is a factor in turning ozone precursors into smog. But despite global warming — and, perhaps more importantly, the expansion of urban heat islands — urban air quality keeps improving. So whatever has increased childhood asthma rates, it’s not outdoor air pollution or whatever small increment of it might be attributable to global warming.

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In November of last year, EPA proposed to scale back the overall Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) 2014 blending target from 18.15 billion to 15.21 billion gallons, and to trim the mandate’s corn-ethanol component from 14.4 billion to 13.0 billion gallons. Forcing EPA’s hand was a set of market constraints commonly called the “E10 blend wall.” EPA intervened so that refiners would not be obligated to purchase and blend more ethanol than could actually be sold in gasoline.

The biofuel industry fiercely opposes the proposed cutbacks. EPA is expected to announce the final 2014 RFS production quota in June.

To help EPA stick to its guns, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) yesterday released Ethanol’s Broken Promise: Using Less Corn Ethanol Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions. The study estimates that EPA’s proposed 1.39 billion gallon cutback in the corn-ethanol blending target would “lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) — as much as taking 580,000 cars off the road for a year.”

EPA can’t dispute this conclusion because the numbers come from the agency’s own data. EPA estimates that, on a life-cycle basis, corn ethanol’s carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) emissions were 33% higher than gasoline’s in 2012.

Since a chief purpose of the RFS is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the policy is counterproductive if corn-ethanol emits more CO2e than the gasoline it displaces.

EPA, however, predicts that by 2022, biofuel production will reduce net CO2e emissions by 17%.

Not so fast, says EWG! EPA assumes that by 2022, carbon-neutral biomass will power ethanol plants. It’s more likely that most plants will run electricity from natural gas. More importantly, land-use conversions associated with ethanol production release carbon locked in soils. And, EWG contends, EPA’s analysis “essentially ignored all land use change emissions before 2022.”

EWG estimates that during 2008-2012 alone, RFS-induced land conversions released 85-to-236 million metric tons of CO2e emissions per year. [click to continue…]

Was Pennsylvania wise to encourage hydraulic fracturing of shale gas and New York foolish to ban it, or vice versa?

Buffalo News reporter Jerry Zremski explores this question today in “Border tale of boom and bust,” the first of a three-part series.

Zremski interviewed both experts and work-a-day people living in four northern-tier rural Pennsylvania counties and four adjacent southern-tier rural New York counties. All eight counties sit atop gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale. The article is balanced. People on both sides of the fracking issue get their say. Zremski does not belittle environmental concerns or ignore social costs (truck noise, damaged roads, crime) that can increase along with wealth in a boom town.

Nonetheless, the data he presents paint a stark contrast of growth and opportunity in Pennsylvania versus stagnation and decline in New York: [click to continue…]