The Weakest Link in Greenhouse Gas Regulation? USEPA's Tailoring Rule
This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.
Implementing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA’s) regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act (CAA) is a three link chain, and each link in the chain is necessary and determinative of the success of the program as a whole. If any link fails, so does USEPA’s ability to regulate GHGs under the CAA. The three links are: (1) the Endangerment Finding; (2) the Tailoring Rule; and (3) the Best Available Control Technology (BACT) guidance. Previous articles in this blog and other blogs as well as teleseminar presentations by Reed Smith’s Environmental Team have discussed the likelihood of success to challenges to the Endangerment Finding. This post will briefly describe challenges to what is likely the weakest link in USEPA’s GHG regulation chain: the Tailoring Rule.
On August 12, 2010 EPA issued the final “Tailoring Rule.” The rule sets forth USEPA’s determination as to which GHG sources will be covered under the CAA and at what point these sources will be covered. Without the Tailoring Rule, even small sources would need to get permits for their GHG emissions when the Agency’s emission limits trigger CAA permitting rules for industrial facilities. The CAA’s emission thresholds for “conventional pollutants” such as lead and sulfur dioxide are 100 or 250 tons a year, but USEPA has indicated that those limits are not feasible for GHGs, which are emitted in much larger quantities.
So far there are numerous challenges to the Tailoring Rule. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit consolidated 20 of the lawsuits against USEPA’s Tailoring Rule. The case’s court date has not yet been set. Unlike challengers to the Endangerment Finding who don’t want USEPA to act, most of the challengers to the Tailoring Rule (in particular the environmental groups) don’t think USEPA is going far enough to regulate GHGs under the rule.
These challenges to the Tailoring Rule likely have some merit. The crux of these challenges focus on the threshold and timing determinations in USEPA’s final Tailoring Rule. USEPA initially proposed to regulate industrial sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, but the final rule set a significantly higher emission threshold with plans to phase in smaller sources over time. Starting in January 2011, only sources that already have to apply for permits for other pollutants and emit more than 75,000 tons of GHGs per year would be affected. And starting in July 2011 new and modified plants that emit more than 100,000 tons of GHGs per year would be affected. This effectively leaves major industrial sources under the 75,000 threshold unregulated until at least 2016 and perhaps beyond. Challenges to the Tailoring Rule claims that this switch from 25,000 to 75,000 tons in the Final Rule is arbitrary and capricious with no scientific basis in the record to support it.
Interestingly, one of the most significant challenges to the Tailoring Rule has been brought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). This challenge, filed on August 2, 2010, has been getting a lot of press lately, likely due to the CBD's impressive track record. This non-profit organization has picked legal battles it is likely to win, claiming that 93 percent of its lawsuits result in favorable outcomes.
