Regardless of the current Supreme Court-ordered stay of the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency has requested funds to help states develop compliance in its fiscal 2017 budget request, much to the chagrin of Republican lawmakers.
Appearing Wednesday for a budget hearing before the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy explained that while the stay prohibits the EPA from implementing the rule, states can still work voluntarily toward compliance. In those cases, EPA is happy to help.
“States want to work together on this,” McCarthy said. “They want to know and be prepared for when the court concludes its review of this, to be able to move forward quickly. We’re trying to respond to that, and that’s what these monies are all about.”
The EPA’s fiscal 2017 budget request includes roughly $235 million to support the administration’s climate agenda. Within that total, approximately $50.5 million is earmarked for state Clean Power Plan action plan development.
This allocation signals a disconnect from where Republican appropriators believe EPA’s priorities should be, subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “There is a concern that rather than focusing on the core mission of attending to and cleaning up the environment, the agency is pumping out rule after rule that is based on questionable legal authority,” Murkowski said.
Unsurprisingly, subcommittee Ranking Member Tom Udall (D-N.M.) disagreed. “I’m pleased to say that EPA has not skipped a beat,” Udall said of the agency’s willingness to help states during the stay.
The Clean Power Plan, which requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals, is expected to be on hold for the next year or two. Under the Supreme Court stay, the rule cannot be enforced until it has been deemed legal by the federal courts. A suit against the rule is moving through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is expected to be decided this fall. That decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court, where a decision would be expected in late 2017 at the earliest, leaving the rule in the hands of the next administration to implement.
Regardless of the lag time granted by the stay, opponents of the rule remained vocal during the hearing, running through the usual gamut of criticisms.
The rule will drive up energy prices, sending industry abroad, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said. Companies leaving the country, and taking their emissions with them, “doesn’t mean that the industry is not there,” Cassidy explained. “They’ve just moved to a country where they can emit as much as they wish, plus release other pollutants, So, on net, on a global issue, we’re worse off.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) argued that the rule would have a negligible effect, resulting in a reduction in global average temperatures of only .02 degrees Celsius, according to a CATO study cited by the senator, not nearly enough to compensate for the loss of American jobs in coal country.
Such quantification is shortsighted, McCarthy countered, stating that the rule’s benefits are not limited to any reduction in global temperature rise. “There are benefits from traditional pollutant reductions and there are certainly going to be benefits, as Paris showed, in the U.S. providing domestic leadership that will underpin strong international efforts,” she said, referencing the December adoption of the Paris Agreement, the world’s first universal international climate agreement.
