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Chemistry Council Says Senate Should Delay EPA on CO2 (Update1)
2010-09-14 17:55:46.993 GMT
(Updates with Jackson comment in sixth paragraph.)
By Simon Lomax
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Senate panel that oversees
the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency should try to
delay greenhouse gas regulations for power plants, refineries
and factories for up to three years, the American Chemistry
Council and other industry-backed groups said.
The legislation that funds the EPA can "temporarily
restrict" the agency from enforcing greenhouse-gas regulations
for industrial polluters planned for next year, the chemistry
council said in a letter today to the Senate Appropriations
Committee. The committee is due to debate the EPA's budget on
Sept. 16.
The EPA plans to start regulating industrial sources of
carbon dioxide and other gases scientists have linked to climate
change. The agency action follows the failure of cap-and-trade
legislation, in which companies would have bought and sold a
declining number of pollution rights, to clear the Senate after
narrowly passing the House of Representatives last year.
Lawmakers should delay the EPA's carbon regulations, issued
under the existing Clean Air Act, "for a two- or three-year
period" to give Congress time to find another way to deal with
greenhouse gases, the chemistry council and other groups
including the American Petroleum Institute and National Mining
Association, said in the letter.
Companies that own power plants, factories and refineries
don't know which pollution-control technologies will be required
by the EPA and how much they'll cost, the industry groups said.
There is a "very real prospect" that investment in new
industrial projects could be "delayed, curtailed, or even
worse, canceled," they said.
Helping Economy
The EPA's new rules, which will require newly built and
modified sources of pollution to use the "best available"
technology for limiting greenhouse gases, should help rather
than hurt the economy, Lisa Jackson, the agency's administrator,
said at a conference in Washington today.
While the agency has still to define what it considers the
best-available methods for controlling greenhouse gases, it is
examining "common-sense strategies that encourage investment in
energy-efficiency and updated technologies," Jackson said.
The carbon regulations "should spark clean-energy
innovation" in the U.S. economy and create "green" jobs,
Jackson said. Critics of the new greenhouse-gas limits are
relying on "wild and unproven projections of economic
collapse," she said.
For Related News and Information:
Top environment stories: GREEN <GO>
Stories about U.S. and climate: TNI US CLIMATE <GO>
Global emissions data: EMIS <GO>
Northeast U.S. trading: RGGI <GO>
--Editors: Dan Stets, Richard Stubbe
To contact the reporter on this story:
Simon Lomax in Washington at +1-202-654-4305 or
slomax@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Dan Stets at +1-212-617-4403 or
dstets@bloomberg.net
