Earth Equity News

EPA Carbon Control Seen as Fraught With Problems. By Timothy Gardiner, Reuters, October 7, 2009. "The Obama administration has warned it could use the Environmental Protection Agency to help cut carbon emissions if Congress drags its heels, but legal and logistical problems could thwart that strategy... The administration has always said it prefers legislation over action by the EPA. But to prod business to support efforts in Congress, and to show the world Washington is taking action on climate change, the administration has also pressed the EPA to take early steps on regulating greenhouse gases. The same day the senators unveiled the bill, the EPA proposed a rule, that would narrow the scope of the Clean Air Act, to force new factories and power plants to cut greenhouse gas emissions... Many of the troubles with EPA acting by itself on climate have to do with the sheer size of the potential U.S. carbon market. If the EPA were to impose a national cap on carbon pollution, it would create credits worth hundreds of billions of dollars for the right to emit greenhouse gases, said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA assistant administrator. That's about 10 times the size of previous emissions programs on acid rain that the agency has helped run. Another likely problem is that the EPA would have trouble dictating how the states should distribute the permits and spend profits from their sale... Holmstead said any attempt to regulate carbon under the Clean Air Act, the law that empowers the EPA to protect air quality, would 'create lots of work for lawyers.'"