Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
1/30/2015
The Environmental Protection Agency remains undaunted by threats from Congress to attempt to block the agency’s proposed carbon emissions regulation for existing coal-fired power plants, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said this week during the National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and Environment. “We are using authority that Congress has given us. We’re going to do it right. We’re going to follow along in the science and we will, I’m sure, spend a great deal of time on [Capitol] Hill explaining this, but in the end, Congress gave us not just the authority, but the responsibility for ensuring the protection of public health and the environment,” she said.
McCarthy said that challenges to the regulation of pollutants are old news for the EPA and that the agency will address the new challenges as they have the old, with science. “The challenge of regulating carbon pollution is no different than how EPA has faced every pollution challenge that we have been facing for the past 43 years. We’re going to follow the science and we’re going to follow the law,” she said. The proposed regulation in question sets state-specific emission reduction goals and requires states to develop action plans to meet those goals. The proposed regulations are due to be finalized mid-summer.
Administrator Says Interactions With States Have Been Productive
McCarthy also highlighted what she described as productive interactions between the EPA and states and utilities regarding the development of the proposed regulations, dubbed the Clean Power Plan. “One of the most important things that we tried to do, I think successfully, was to put the Clean Power Plan out in a way that invited discussion before and during so that we could make it flexible enough that every state could work with their own utilities and their own energy world to design a strategy moving forward that would respect the information that they have.” she said. “There’s no finger pointing at who likes it and doesn’t like it. In my world we’re just rolling up our sleeves with the states and utilities and the energy industry and making it work.”
McCarthy said that she remains assured that given continued collaboration between the agency and the states and utilities, the reliability of the nation’s energy sector is not in danger. “Energy is a public service. It is an essential public service and I will always treat [utilities] with the respect that they deserve as providing an essential service and we will not threaten the reliability or affordability of that energy supply. We’re going to make progress, but we’re going to make it together,” she said.
