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President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has made the U.S. energy industry a focus of its plans for his first days in office, with analysts and energy experts expecting a rollback […]
The post Trump’s Focus on Energy Will Have Variety of Impacts appeared first on POWER Magazine.
President Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce regulation and control regulatory costs. One of his first actions after taking office was to issue an executive order calling for the elimination of two existing regulations for every one new regulation issued. Toward that end, the Trump administration has acted or sought to reverse more than 70 environmental rules. Among them are several Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations governing air, water, and waste emissions from the nation’s power plants. Here’s where those rules stand today. Notes: FIP = federal implementation plan; SIP = state implementation plan. Sources: Environmental Integrity Project, Environmental Law at Harvard, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School
The EPA released a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan in October 2017, saying the rule “exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.” In July 2018, the EPA sent a replacement plan to President Trump for review, saying it would seek public comment on the new measure after a White House review is completed but it did not provide a timeline.…
The Trump administration is “closely” reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final cost consideration finding for its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) to determine whether it should reconsider the rule or some part of it, it said in an April 18 federal court filing.
The EPA filed a motion with the D.C. Circuit urging the court to delay oral arguments scheduled on May 18 for a case filed by an assortment of coal producing and generating companies, which are challenging the agency’s “Supplemental Finding That It Is Appropriate and Necessary To Regulate Hazardous Air Pollutants From Coal- and Oil-Fired Electric Utility Steam Generating Units.”
Delay and Deflect
In its court filing, the agency said that it needs more time as it “intends to closely review the Supplemental Finding, and the prior positions taken by the Agency with respect to the Supplemental Finding may not necessarily reflect its ultimate conclusions after that review is complete.”
The Obama administration’s EPA issued the final supplemental finding a year ago after a divided Supreme Court in June 2015 (in Michigan v.…
President Donald Trump’s drive to roll back federal regulations, especially from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will not be simple or smooth, a veteran Washington, D.C., attorney said at a utility conference on February 8.
Speaking at the Energy, Utility, and Environment Conference (EUEC) in San Diego, Calif., Thomas Lorenzen, a partner with D.C.–based law firm Crowell & Moring, told attendees that the roadblocks standing in the way of a rapid rollback are many and varied.
One of Trump’s signature moves, his January 30 executive order that requires two rules to be repealed for every new rule published, isn’t going to be anywhere near as simple as it might appear, Lorenzen said.
“It’s really going to depend on the enabling statutes,” he noted, since many regulations exist because of mandates from Congress. “Many of these laws have not been revised in decades.”
Without changes in the law, the administration’s hands are often tied.
“It’s not clear how effective this order is going to be,” he said, pointing out that withdrawing or revising an existing rule requires a new rulemaking process.…