Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson defended the science behind the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding” at a Senate hearing on Tuesday—the day after she told coal-state lawmakers that the agency could begin phasing in permit requirements controlling greenhouse gases emitted by large stationary sources beginning in 2011.
Jackson on Monday said in a
letter (PDF) that she would act, by April, to ensure that no stationary sources would be required to get a Clean Air Act permit to cover greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2010, but that regulations for large stationary sources would likely begin in 2011. Jackson was responding to a
letter (PDF) sent to her on Friday by Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and seven other senators from coal states.
“In the first half of 2011, only those facilities [fewer than 400] that already must apply for Clean Air Act permits as a result of their non-greenhouse gas emissions will need to address their greenhouse gas emissions in their permit applications,” she wrote. “Further, I am expecting that greenhouse gas emissions from other large sources will phase in starting in the latter half of 2011. Between the latter half of 2011 and 2013, I expect that the threshold for permitting will be substantially higher than the 25,000-ton limit that EPA originally proposed.”
Jackson wrote that the EPA was obligated to treat GHG emissions as “air pollution” under the Clean Air Act and to “engage with the best available science” in determining whether those emissions endangered public health and welfare per the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in
Massachusetts v. EPA (2007).
The agency’s December 2009 “endangerment” finding—a formal declaration that GHGs pose health and welfare threats—was made only after the EPA had conducted a “comprehensive survey of the soundest available science and carefully reviewed hundreds of thousands of public comments,” she said. She also said that the conclusion had not been reached by the EPA alone, pointing to several other government departments and to the U.S. Senate.
Now the agency was preparing to issue, as obligated by the endangerment finding, GHG standards for light-duty motor vehicles (models 2012–2016), by late next month, she wrote. At the same time, it was looking to put into law the proposed PSD (prevention of significant deterioration) and Title V GHG
Tailoring Rule. If enacted, those regulations would require facilities emitting more than 25,000 tons of GHGs a year to obtain permits and demonstrate they were using the “best practices and technologies to minimize GHG emissions.”
The agency wouldn’t target small emitters until at least 2016, she said.
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