Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
11/7/2014
When it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions regulations for coal-fired power plants, the newly elected Republican Congress is in a situation to pick its battles, leaders of various nongovernmental organizations said following this week’s midterm elections. Prior to taking control of the Senate, Republicans in both houses of Congress had introduced legislation to kill the EPA’s proposed regulations for new and existing coal-fired power plants. The rules for new-build plants would essentially mandate the use of carbon capture and storage while the rules for existing plants set state-specific emission reduction goals and require the states to develop action plans to meet those goals. “The congress as a general matter was pretty hostile to regulating greenhouse gasses to begin with and I think they’re perhaps maybe a little bit more so now, but … they’re going to want to govern. They want to get things done and getting things done means working out how you do it,” Bob Perciasepe, President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and former Deputy Administrator of the EPA told GHG Monitor this week.
Since the election Republican leaders have expressed a willingness to work with the administration, but several NGO representatives said this week they don’t believe that will extend to environmental issues. “We remain concerned about where the Republican leadership is going to take the new Congress, the House has made very clear what its agenda is over the past few years passing environmental roll-back after environmental roll-back and during the campaign, Mitch McConnell was also very clear on how he planned to use his leadership to block environmental protections and roll back existing ones and there’s really nothing in what they’ve said so far that gives anyone any confidence that they have an agenda other than that,” David Goldston, Director of the Government Affairs Program at the National Resourced Defense Council told reporters during a telephone press conference late this week.
Regardless of the GOP’s stance on the EPA and the power plant regulations, Goldston and Perciasepe agree, the regulations will likely be finalized, though the path there will probably be a bit rockier. “We expect the climate plan to proceed as it’s been laid out with EPA taking comments, reviewing them, working things out, putting a final proposal out in June and then the states picking it up from there. We view the worst case scenario as extraordinarily remote,” Goldston said. Perciasepe expressed a similar sentiment. “I think there’ll be noise. I think Congress will try to restrict EPA. They’ll definitely increase oversight. They may look at the schedules, but I predict in the final analysis that recognizing that this is a plan that actually gets implemented by states I think that it’ll eventually be implemented,” he said.
Not everyone is hopeful that the rules get implemented, however. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity released a statement following the elections this week expressing anticipation that the shift in power will result in a shift of priorities away from climate change. “Yesterday, the American people chose to elect a Senate that can stand up to the President and make him work to find compromise rather than governing by executive order without regard for others opinion. I am optimistic this sea change will bring about much needed clarity on the real issues facing our country and put energy policy making back in the hands of Congress where it belongs,” said Mike Duncan, president and CEO of ACCCE in the release. “Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and in state capitols across America, are prepared to take on the Administration’s misguided, overreaching regulatory climate crusade and fight to ensure that American’s real priorities are put front and center of the political agenda.”
Riders Cause Concern
While measures to limit EPA’s authority would be highly unlikely to make it past the President’s desk, the administration could be put in a sticky spot if these measures are attached in the form of riders on an appropriations bill, an action that is seen as nearly inevitable. “I can’t imagine that somebody won’t try to do something on appropriations; Congress will have to balance their desire to govern which they ran on, and getting a budget done is part of governing, whether or not they want to gum it up with these issues that could create problems in governance,” Perciasepe said.
Goldston decried this method as “hostage taking” and noted that in previous situations the president had stated that he would not sign such bills. “Republicans say they want to return to regular order, part of what that means is you don’t legislate on spending bills. Legislating on spending bills is a method of hostage taking and it should not be considered the way to do business and we think that in the past the White House has stood up to that kind of process and that they will again,” Goldston said.
Situation in States May have Little Effect
Republicans also won the majority of the 36 gubernatorial elections held this week with some resulting in a change of party. While the EPA’s existing source standards come down for the states to implement, the Republican leadership in the states isn’t cause for concern, David Doniger, Policy Director for the NRDC’s Climate & Clean Air Program said. “It was true before the election that there were both Democratic and Republican governors who were signaling the willingness to participate in this process to work on their plans and I think that will be true afterwards. The fundamental situation hasn’t changed in some of these states. There will also be some states that thumb their noses at the whole process, but we’re going to work to show at the state level that the path to meet the Clean Power Plan targets is one that builds the economy and builds jobs and saves money for consumers in each of these states, it’s a pretty attractive package and we think that in many of the states … the merits will still have a lot of pull, even on the new governors and of course there’s an important gubernatorial change in Pennsylvania where we look forward to working with a new governor who’s likely to be more interested in this process,” Doniger said.
In Pennsylvania, Democrat Tom Wolf unseated incumbent Republican, Tom Corbett. According to Wolf’s campaign platform, under his leadership the state will join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Fate of Nominations Remains Uncertain
The fate of numerous nominees awaiting confirmation, including Chris Smith, nominee for Assistant Secretary for Energy and Fossil Fuel in the Department of Energy, remains uncertain, Goldston said. “It’s too early to say. Obviously they haven’t exactly been cooperative in the minority whether that will change, we’ll see, but there’s a huge backlog of nominations … these are major positions to help these agency’s function. One of the things the republicans complained about during the campaign was they said the public felt they couldn’t get basic things done regardless of whether that’s accurate or not,” he said.
