Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
2/07/2014
New greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants and the emergence of clean energy will pave the way for Congress to take up climate legislation in the next four to six years, said the President of the National Resources Defense Council, Frances Beinecke, at an event in Washington, D.C., this week exploring the legislative outlook for energy issues in 2014. At the event, hosted by Politico, moderator Darren Samuelsohn asked Beinecke whether Congress would come back to a carbon debate in the next decade, or if the country was moving completely away from the legislative approach on climate. “Congress absolutely has to come back to climate,” Beinecke responded, adding, “I actually think what will happen is we’ll put in standards on power plants; we will unleash clean energy—as it’s being unleashed across the country right now, there have been 86,000 jobs that have been created on clean energy in the last three years. By the time Congress gets around to it, it’s actually going to be happening in states all across the country and it will be an easier thing to do.”
Beinecke was one of several panelists at the event—which also included other speakers from energy, policy and environmental organizations and several prominent legislators—to speak about the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft and anticipated rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants and other efforts to limit GHGs. Beinecke sat on the second of three panels among other organization heads, and she and other panelists said addressing greenhouse gas emissions was among the top priorities on their legislative wish lists for the coming year. She added that setting standards for power plants was “the single largest thing we can do to reduce emissions,” with 40 percent of GHGs coming from power plants. “We can bring that down, get the U.S. on the trajectory for the 17 percent reduction that the President committed to,” she said. “And this a huge and very significant step forward on climate. It’s the absolute centerpiece of the President’s climate plan. And it is where the environmental community is focused.”
Alternative Path Forward for Greenhouse Gases
Ross Eisenberg, Vice President of Energy and Resources Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, also said he wanted to see Congress reengage in some fashion on greenhouse gasses, but in a different way from Beinecke. He said he wants to see legislators “try to draw some lines around what the [Environmental Protection Agency] is doing and give them a reasonable path forward,” suggesting that legislation introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) that would set various requirements for EPA regulations limiting emissions from power plants—including that any emission limits for coal-fired plants to have also been achieved by at least six units at different U.S. commercial power plants over a one-year period—could provide that path forward.
He also said that he thinks the country is already dealing with greenhouse gases, but that “it’s just not in a particularly good or coordinated way right now. We have the Clean Air Act, which is being rolled out in a particularly dangerous way both for the power sector and for manufacturers down the road. … We have a very haphazard uncoordinated way of getting to this, and I think the more that we do and the more it expands the more that we are stuck with a very unworkable regulatory policy on greenhouse gases and climate.”
Legislators Debate EPA Authority to Regulate GHGs
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee also sat on a panel where they discussed their agenda for 2014, and the authority of EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants became a point of contention. “One thing we want EPA to do is follow the law. Just follow the law. Not make law,” Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said. He continued on to suggest that the EPA’s draft rule forcing new coal-fired power plants to use carbon capture and storage technology to meet new emission limits violates the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in that it bases the standards on demonstration projects that have received public funding. “So right now my position on some of these things they’re doing in the war against coal is, you may not like it, but if you can’t change the law, follow the law,” he said.
But Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) pushed back. “I think the EPA is following the law, and I think the courts have agreed with that,” she said, referring to court decisions that found the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “And furthermore, I think the problem with coal, is not a war against coal, but rather market conditions changing, a lot more natural gas coming on the market and coal becoming—not only is it less environmentally sound than natural gas, but it’s also just not as economical to produce or to burn. And so I feel badly for the coal miners and their families, but we need to help them transition as our economy transitions to a cleaner, more easily achieved fuel, which is natural gas.”
