Interested parties will have four more days to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Energy Incentive Program Design Details, under an extension announced Thursday in the Federal Register. The design details were opened for comment June 30, with the input period due to end on Aug. 29. The enhanced comment period will run through Sept. 2. “The EPA is making this change to align the public comment period with the public hearing submittal time frame,” the extension announcement says.
The CEIP is a voluntary program related to the Clean Power Plan carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, meant to promote early action in carbon reductions. Under the program states can issue “early action allowances” or “early action emission rate credits,” which are then matched by the EPA. “States in turn provide these awarded matching compliance instruments to the providers of eligible CEIP [renewable energy] and low-income community projects that received the early action allowances or early action ERCs from the state,” the proposal explains.
Currently, four comments have been filed for the CEIP on reguatlions.gov, all supporting the proposal. EPA is also hosting a public hearing on the proposal on Aug. 3 in Chicago.
The release of the design details in June was controversial, given the program’s relationship to the Clean Power Plan, which the EPA is legally barred from enforcing under a Supreme Court order until the rule has been deemed lawful. The agency has held that because developing CEIP does not force implementation of the CPP it is in no way violating the stay while it battles a federal lawsuit against the rule.
