Today I was a guest on the Liberty Week podcast, hosted by my CEI colleague Ryan Young. The subject of the show is EPA’s new climate plan for existing power plants. Click here for a listen.
William Yeatman
During yesterday’s roll out of the EPA’s climate plan for existing power plants, Administrator Gina McCarthy said something alarming, and I’m not talking about her global warming spiel. Rather, I’m referring to her evident flippancy regarding the potential for EPA’s rules to turn out the lights. Below, I’ve reposted the passage that raised my eyebrow:
The critics are wrong about reliability, too. For decades, power plants have met pollution limits without risking reliability.* If anything, what threatens reliability and causes blackouts is devastating extreme weather fueled by climate change. I’m tired of people pointing to the Polar Vortex as a reason not to act on climate.
Here, Administrator McCarthy is referring to the fact that coal saved much of the country’s bacon during last winter’s polar vortex. Due to logistical constraints, there weren’t adequate supplies of natural gas for both space heating and electricity generation in many areas of the northeast when temperatures plummeted. So coal power had to save the day. However, 90% of the coal capacity that was called into action to avert an energy crisis—only months ago(!)—will be retired next spring due to EPA’s outrageous, ultra–political Utility MACT.
According to FERC Commission Philip Moeller, rolling blackouts will be a “possibility” thanks to EPA’s nonsensical Utility MACT. But don’t bother Gina McCarthy about it! She’s “tired” of hearing about it.
Notably, an informal FERC analysis shredded EPA’s reliability analysis for the Utility MACT, which has since proven so unreliable. With this in mind, it shouldn’t be comforting to learn that the agency’s just-unveiled climate plan also was subjected to an EPA reliability analysis, and the rule passed with flying colors.
*This statement–“For decades, power plants have met pollution limits without risking reliability”–fails to account for the fact that the EPA has never been as politicized (ie, captured by green special interests) and power hungry as it has been since 2009.
Executive agencies weren’t present at the creation. Rather, they are creations of Congress, and they enjoy no powers outside those that are delegated to them by Congress.
In delegating its authority, the Congress is quite literally granting a piece of its policy-making power to the Executive. In fact, such a delegation is a practical necessity: Congress can’t legislate every foreseeable scenario, so it must allow agencies the discretion to act within bounds established by the enabling statute (if it is to create regulatory regimes). Courts understand this; delegation is the basis of the judiciary’s deference to executive action.
Of course, a policy-making executive comports poorly with the Founding Father’s distrust of executive authority and also their view of the Congress as the primary policymaker. Simply put, policy in America should have a popular mandate. Accordingly, a federal agency’s exercise of its powers, especially when involving an expansion of authority, should have been a policy that the President campaigned on, or at least highlighted in some fashion when he or she is being vetted by the voters. That way, the American people have a say. No less an authority than the Supreme Court has identified the President’s popular mandate as a basis for deference to agency decision-making.
All this brings me to my point: the conspicuous absence of a popular mandate for EPA’s climate plan for existing power plants, which will be unveiled today. Consider:
- The President campaigned to the right of Mitt Romney on energy and environment. During the 2012 Presidential debates, Obama never once mentioned global warming.
- As noted by my colleague Marlo Lewis, the Congress explicitly considered the policies that EPA is now proposing to impose. As such, the people’s representatives have spoken to the issue, and they didn’t proceed with policy.
- As if that’s not enough, poll after poll demonstrates that the American electorate gives ultra-low priority to global warming.
Taken as a whole, the available evidence strongly indicates the President’s climate plan is illegitimate.
The McLaughlin Group: For the third time in recent memory, The McLaughlin Group devoted a segment to climate change. Panelists were: Pat Buchanan (American Conservative, paleo-conservative), Susan Ferrechio (Washington Examiner, mainstream conservative), David Rennie (Economist, European centrist), Mort Zuckerman (U.S. News & World Report, American centrist). At the outset of Friday’s broadcast, the eponymous host of the show tossed a climate change grenade to his guests:
What accounts for the increasingly alarmist tone of official climate change reports?
The ensuing debate was lively, and I thought all parties acquitted themselves well. See for yourself:
President Obama today signaled that his administration will rely on hocus-pocus “co-benefits” to justify EPA’s forthcoming climate plan for existing power plants.
During his weekly radio address, the President claimed:
“in just the first year that these standards go into effect, up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided — and those numbers will go up from there.”
Of course, carbon dioxide is inert. So it doesn’t cause heart attacks. Nor is it an asthma trigger. So what is the President talking about?
In fact, he’s employing an EPA scam,* known as “co-benefits,” by which the agency has justified a number of recent, highly politicized regulations. Basically, he’s saying that his climate plan will cause a shift away from coal, which will result in the reduction of emissions other than greenhouse gases, including particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. These are the emissions (i.e., PM and NOx) the President refers to when he claims his climate plan would prevent 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks.
There are many reasons that the President’s use of “co-benefits” is wholly inappropriate. For starters, there are entire sections of the Clean Air Act given to the regulation of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. In fact, the administrator is legally bound to issue national ambient air quality standards for these pollutants, and these standards must be set at a level that is requisite to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. There is, therefore, neither a public health purpose nor a need for EPA to use a climate plan to regulate particulate matter and nitrogen oxides emissions under the Clean Air Act.
In addition, EPA has demonstrated a troubling propensity for double-counting these “co-benefits.”
Finally, as I discuss here, the science underlying these putative co-benefits is highly suspect.
Rather than militate in favor of the rule, the President’s “co-benefits” sleight of hand speaks volumes about how crummy a deal is the EPA’s climate plan. As I explain here, the regulation would upend electric markets, rendering it one of the costliest, ever. And yet, the preponderance of greenhouse gas emissions come from Asia, so EPA’s climate rule wouldn’t actually impact global temperatures, a fact that has been conceded by no less an authority than EPA administrator Gina McCarthy.
[Editor’s Note: “Primary Document Dump Fridays” is a new weekly feature at globalwarming.org. Every Friday, we’ll post all the primary documents relevant to a major EPA regulation]
On Monday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is expected to roll out the Agency’s much-anticipated climate plan for existing power plants. The climate plan is authorized by section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, pursuant to which EPA is empowered to promulgate regulations, known as “guidelines,” whose function is to aid states in the formulation of implementation plans to achieve the “best” system of emission control system for a “designated pollutant” from a “designated (existing) source.” States are then required to submit these plans to EPA for review.
For EPA’s climate rule, the “designated pollutant” is carbon dioxide, and the “designated sources” are coal-fired power plants. To date, there have been five other designated pollutant-designated source pairs: (1) fluoride emissions from phosphate fertilizer plants; (2) sulfuric acid mist from sulfuric acid production facilities; (3) total reduced sulfur from kraft pulp mills; (4) fluoride emissions from primary aluminum plants; and (5) methane and organic compounds from solid waste landfills.
For last Friday’s primary document dump, I posted EPA’s regulations establishing the process by which States submit 111(d) plans, and also the Guidelines for the aforementioned four pairs of designated pollutants and designated sources. Today, I’ve posted all of EPA’s reviews of State 111(d) submissions.* Together, these two posts provide all the possible background information from the Federal Register on EPA’s forthcoming climate plan for existing power plans. In a subsequent post, I will interpret these documents.
Fluoride Emissions from Existing Phosphate Fertilizer Plants
Arkansas 5/12/1982 47 FR 20490
California 6/29/1982 47 FR 28099
Louisiana 5/12/1982 47 FR 20490
Mississippi 7/6/1982 47 FR 29234
Sulfuric Acid Mist Emissions from Existing Sulfuric Acid Production Units
When it comes to the expansion of federal power, Barack Obama is a once-in-a-generation President. According to data compiled by globalwarming.org, President Obama’s EPA has executed as many Clean Air Act regulatory takeovers of State programs than the previous three administrations combined, multiplied by 10.
The charts below depict the number of Clean Air Act federal implementation plans imposed by EPA, broken down into presidential terms and also by year.* A federal implementation plan, or FIP, is the most extreme action the EPA can take against a State under the cooperative federalism scheme created by Congress. A FIP entails a complete EPA takeover from the state of the regulatory regime in question. With this in mind, the chart below speaks volumes about cooperative federalism as practiced in the Obama era.
From yesterday evening:
Last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) demand-side response regulation impermissibly infringed on the States’ exclusive authority to regulate retail electricity markets.
Next week, the President is expected to “personally” unveil a climate plan for existing power plants that would, as reported, give the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to impose demand-side management programs on unwilling States.
This is a problematic contradiction.
To recap: Under the Federal Power Act, Congress limited the reach of federal energy regulators “only to those matters which are not subject to regulation by the States” (16 U.S.C. §824(a)). And in a split 2-1 decision rendered last Friday, May 23rd (Electric Power Supply Association v. FERC), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that demand-side response is a “matter” left to States. But under the Clean Air Act, as understood by the Obama administration, the Congress empowered EPA—federal environmental regulators—to impose a demand-side response program on unwilling States. As reported by Bloomberg, demand-side response is one of a number of “beyond the fence” or “system-wide” policies that EPA’s impending climate rule will allow States to choose from, in order to achieve mandated cuts in greenhouse gas emissions (somewhere around 25% to 35% below an as yet to be revealed baseline). Because the Clean Air Act gives EPA the power to reject State proposals and impose plans in their stead, the agency would thus gain the authority to force upon the States a demand-side response in the form of a federal implementation plan.
Indeed, most of EPA’s reported options for complying with its Clean Air Act climate plan—including efficiency rebates and renewable energy mandates—are “matters” which are subject to direct regulation by the States. Almost all States undergo some sort of multiyear utility planning, usually known as “Integrated Resource Planning,” under the purview of State regulatory bodies (see map directly below). It is accepted as a given that the Federal Power Act bars FERC from interfering from Integrated Resource Planning. However, under the current administration’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, Integrated Resource Planning effectively would become subject to EPA oversight, and the agency would even gain the power to impose an IRP.
This raises a rather obvious question: Why would Congress give federal environmental regulators powers over state-wide energy markets that it refused to give to federal energy regulators?
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