Senate, Obama Administration Unveil Plans to Pursue Major Greenhouse Gas Emitters

This story appears in the Oct. 5 print edition of Transport Topics.

Both the Senate and the Obama administration last week unveiled major initiatives to crack down on the largest U.S. emitters of greenhouse gases.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Sept. 30 introduced a climate-change bill that sets more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets than a similar proposal the House of Representatives passed in June.

The new Senate bill calls for a 20% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 from a 2005 benchmark — a deeper cut than the 17% reduction packaged with the House bill.

Like the House bill, the Boxer-Kerry bill would create a cap-and-trade system under which businesses that emit greenhouse gases would have to purchase “allowances” in order to exceed the federal emission limits the bill would create.

“Our health, our security, our economy, our environment all demand we reinvent the way America uses energy,” Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said Sept. 30 at a Washington, D.C., press event.

On the same day, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency would use its authority under the Clean Air Act to require large, stationary greenhouse gas emitters to equip new and refurbished facilities with the latest pollution-control technologies.

The proposed EPA rule would require large facilities with more than 25,000 tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions — oil refineries, power plants and factories, for example — “to adopt the best, most efficient technologies when [such facilities] are constructed or when they are upgraded,” Jackson said.

Jackson announced the proposed rule at a press conference last week, after the California Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles.

The proposed Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule will be open for public comment for 60 days after it appears in the Federal Register.

Boxer and Kerry said they will try to pass their bill, called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, by December.

The executive and legislative pollution crackdowns both drew immediate criticism from opponents, who said the measures would hamper nationwide economic recovery.

The top-ranking Republican on Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee, which comprises 11 Democrats and eight Republicans, slammed the new Senate bill soon after its unveiling.

“Senators Kerry and Boxer produced yet another massive energy tax that will destroy jobs, raise electricity and gasoline prices and make America less competitive,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). “This bill is even worse than the energy tax passed in the House,” he added.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Manufacturers lashed out at the proposed EPA rule in a Sept. 30 statement.

“NAM opposes use of the Clean Air Act as a means of regulating greenhouse gas emissions,” the Washington, D.C., trade group said in the statement. “The proposed rule establishes a precedent for economywide regulation that will cost jobs and hurt the nation’s economy at the worst possible time.”

Neither the proposed EPA regulation nor the Boxer-Kerry bill establishes greenhouse gas caps for mobile emitters, such as big trucks. Nevertheless, a representative of American Trucking Associations panned the Boxer-Kerry bill.

“A very preliminary read of this massive bill suggests it falls short of addressing three of ATA’s four primary concerns: mitigating what are likely to be sharp increases in fuel prices, controlling excessive Wall Street speculation in a cap-and-trade system and improving infrastructure to address congestion, a major factor in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Tim Lynch, ATA’s senior vice president of federation relations.

Only “our fourth concern — accelerated funding for research and development for new engines and alternative fuels — appears to get a boost under the SmartWay Transportation Efficiency Program,” Lynch added.

Both the House and Senate cap-and-trade bills direct the EPA, through its SmartWay program, to begin evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty trucks in preparation for eventual regulation.

A spokesman for the Engine Manufacturers Association, a Chicago trade group, expressed relief that the heavy-duty vehicle provisions of both bills are consistent.

“It really provides some clarity,” said EMA spokesman Joe Suchecki. “The [Senate] provision for the on-highway greenhouse gas reductions is pretty much the same as what was passed in the House.”

Suchecki said EMA had worried about dual regulation, because both EPA and the Department of Transportation have been studying heavy-duty truck performance — each agency with the ultimate goal of establishing regulations that would tighten standards for trucks and engines.

Late last month, interagency scrutiny of vehicle performance resulted in a joint EPA/DOT rulemaking that established the nation’s first greenhouse gas reduction standards for cars and light trucks, but not heavy-duty trucks (click here for previous story).