New Materials Call Into Question EPA’s Fundamental Assumptions
Cause of Action joined the Institute for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity, and the Center for Rule of Law in asking the Environmental Protection Agency to reassess certain assumptions it made in its proposed rule entitled National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants From Coal and Oil-Fired Electric Utility Steam Generating Units and Standards of Performance for Fossil-Fuel-Fired Electric Utility, Industrial-Commercial-
A reliability assessment by Office of Electric Reliability (“OER”) of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) and other materials that became available after the close of public comment in this matter raise issues of central relevance to the rulemaking. These materials cast doubt on the fundamental assumptions underlying EPA’s “appropriate and necessary” finding, and major aspects of its proposed Utility MACT rule that impact electric reliability. They demonstrate in particular that EPA “entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem” before it, namely the proposed rule’s impact on regional and local electric reliability and the combined impact on reliability of EPA’s rulemaking agenda.
The groups asked the EPA to delay its rule-making timetable in order to digest the information they presented, as well as to consider the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (“NERC”) long-term reliability assessment due in November 2011, which will be the first cumulative assessment of EPA’s rulemaking agenda to evaluate the localized reliability impact of the proposed Utility MACT rule.
CoA Executive Director Daniel Epstein stated:
CoA’s concerns as petitioner focus on two issues: first, the costs and harms to jobs and second, the lack of transparency involved in the rule-making process.
As for the issue of costs, Senator Inhofe (R-OK) recently indicated that the EPA’s Utility MACT rule would risk plant closures, increase electricity rates, and destroy as much as 1.4 million current jobs. Forty-percent of electric capacity in the United States is based on coal; the EPA rule, without re-opening comments to consider new facts, represents an assault on affordable energy.
Second, the EPA, by burying studies by the Office of Electric Reliability and FERC as well as impatiently avoiding the North American Electric Reliability Corporation study, ignores that electric reliability is a local issue and needs to be assessed at the regional and local levels to ascertain likely shortfalls and bottlenecks. EPA has committed to a rushed rulemaking schedule that will not allow it to consider North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s report—which will be the first report by any organization to assess the local impact of EPA’s Utility MACT.
There are also transparency concerns involved, which relate directly to legal requirements that EPA rules present a “reasoned analysis.” Senator Inhofe requested that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson clarify the extent to which EPA has worked with a number of agencies on the issue of electric reliability. According to Senator Inhofe, “EPA has failed to collaborate with FERC to consider how Utility MACT will affect electric reliability. . . . FERC Commissioner Moeller went as far as to say that ‘the Commission has not acted or studied or provided assistance to any agency, including the EPA.’”
EPA reported this year that the Agency and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) were jointly modeling the potential for coal-fired power plant closures prompted by Utility MACT. However, as FERC’s response to a May 17 letter from Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Ranking Member of the Senate Energy Committee, revealed, nothing as extensive as joint modeling has occurred.
Cause of Action is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest firm that uses public policy and legal reform strategies to ensure greater transparency in government, protect taxpayer interests and promote civil and economic freedoms.