Legal challenges to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan, which would limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act, came too early, according to a panel of federal judges.
“Petitioners are champing at the bit to challenge EPA’s anticipated rule restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants,” wrote Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the court opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “But EPA has not yet issued a final rule. It has issued only a proposed rule. Petitioners nonetheless ask the court to jump into the fray now. They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule. But a proposed rule is just a proposal. In justiciable cases, this court has authority to review the legality of final agency rules.”
The lawsuit from a group of states and Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp, claimed that the EPA exceeded its authority when it proposed the rule last year. Even though the rule isn’t slated to be final until August, the plaintiffs indicated they were facing steep costs to prepare for it.
The proposed rule sets state-specific emissions targets—interim state-level emissions rate goals (2020–2030) and a final 2030 emissions rate limit—in order to cut heat-trapping emissions from existing power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
“We are obviously disappointed with the court’s ruling today, but we still think we have a compelling case that the rule is unlawful,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who led the states’ challenge to the pending rule. “As the court recognized, the rule will be final very soon, and we look forward to continuing to press the issue.”
G7 Summit Leaders Agree to Phase out Fossil Fuels; Deal in Bonn
G7 Countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom—have reached a non-binding agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions of 40–70 percent of 2010 levels by mid-century. This agreement backs earlier recommendations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“We commit to rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption,” G7 officials said in a statement. “As we do that, we recognize the importance of providing those in need with essential energy services, including through the use of targeted cash transfers and other appropriate mechanisms. This reform will not apply to our support for clean energy, renewables and technologies that dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The agreement also calls for G7 countries to help poorer countries develop with clean technologies and address risks from weather disasters as well as to intensify their support for vulnerable countries’ efforts to manage climate change. It is intended, in part, to build momentum ahead of the United Nations climate talks later this year in Paris, at which delegates hope to reach a global climate deal.
In Bonn, Germany, where delegates from nearly 200 countries have been working to pare down draft text for that deal, a partial agreement has been reached to slow deforestation and protect regions holding vast carbon stores. The agreement—covering aspects of the scheme called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+)—resolves outstanding technical issues on the use of REDD+ and provides standardized rules for developing REDD finance. Other, larger policy details such as how finance will flow to those countries that keep forests intact will need to be resolved in Paris (subscription).
Global Warming Pause Refuted by NOAA Study
A new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published in Science refutes a global warming “hiatus” reported in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.
“Adding in the last two years of global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record provide evidence that contradict the notion of a hiatus in recent global warming trends,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, in a press release. “Our new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century.”
In the Science study, authors replotted average annual surface temperatures since 1880, accounting for anomalies in temperature readings from ocean ships and buoys. The latter are given greater weight in the dataset because the number of buoys deployed in the world’s seas is far higher today than decades ago and because the accuracy of readings from them has increased over time.
“The fact that such small changes to the analysis make the difference between a hiatus or not merely underlines how fragile a concept it was in the first place,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, of the study (subscription).
A separate study published Monday in Nature Climate Change faulted IPCC scientists’ communication at the press conference announcing publication of Fifth Assessment Report, noting that to make anthropogenic global warming (AGW) more meaningful to the public the speakers emphasized the record warmth the world had experienced in the past decade yet dismissed the relevance of decadal time scales when journalists enquired about the similarly short pause in global temperature increase. The speakers thereby created uncertainty about what counts as scientific evidence for AGW.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
The next round of international climate negotiations began Monday in Bonn, Germany, and runs through June 11. The main task for the delegates from nearly 200 countries: pare down draft text for a final global climate deal to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. The 89-page working draft contains differing options and viewpoints. Some countries, reports Deutsche Welle, want to set intermediate goals and others—including Russia, Canada, the United States, and the European Union—have pledged formal emissions cuts.
“No matter how you cut it, the hard work will be done in Paris,” a senior developing country delegate told Bloomberg BNA. “We will reduce the options in Bonn, but the final language will only come in Paris.
Multiple reports question whether the world is on track to meet the goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius. One, by the International Energy Agency (IEA), examines clean energy progress—noting shortcomings.
“Indeed, despite positive signs in many areas, for the first time since the IEA started monitoring clean energy progress, not one of the technology fields tracked is meeting its objectives,” the report said. “The future that we are heading towards will be far more difficult unless we can take action now to radically change the global energy system.”
Others say failure is not an option and note that new mechanisms for future rounds of pledges, perhaps in 2025 and 2030, can hit the mark.
“You don’t run a marathon with one step,” said Christiana Figueres, the United Nation’s top climate change official.
Report Emphasizes Importance of Existing Policies, Clean Power Plan to Meet U.S. Climate Commitment
In preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year, the Obama administration pledged to reduce U.S. emissions 26–28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. According to a new paper by the World Resources Institute (WRI), few policy changes will be required for the United States to meet or exceed that commitment. First among the paper’s 10 recommendations: strengthening the Clean Power Plan, which is projected to be finalized in August.
“While our analysis shows that the Clean Power Plan does not need to be strengthened in order to reduce economy-wide emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels in 2025 (as long as ambitious action is taken across other emission sources),” write the authors, “doing so would enable the United States to more easily achieve the upper range of its 2025 target and achieve deeper reductions beyond the 2025–30 time frame.”
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions contributed modeling underlying some of the report’s findings. It used a version of the Energy Information Administration’s well-known National Energy Modeling System (DUKE-NEMS), which is maintained by the Nicholas Institute, to model two pathways for longer-term abatement opportunities through new legislation.
“DUKE-NEMS complements WRI’s model by capturing supply-demand interactive effects,” said Nicholas Institute Senior Policy Associate Etan Gumerman. “We used it to explicitly model economic impacts. It helped us establish the level of emissions reductions that are economically achievable using targeted policies, while highlighting the greater emissions reductions that could come from potential climate legislation.”
Other measures recommended by the WRI report are expanding residential and commercial energy efficiency programs, increasing cuts in emissions of the refrigerant hydroflourocarbon, making industrial emissions standards and fuel economy standards more stringent, establishing emissions standards for new airplanes, increasing carbon sequestration in forests, and cutting methane emissions from coal mines, landfills, and agriculture.
Court Sides with EPA on Ozone Ruling
A federal court is siding with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on enforcement of limits on smog-forming pollution, rejecting challenges from states, industry and environmental groups claiming that the EPA was too strict or too lenient in determining areas that satisfied federal ozone restrictions. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ground-level ozone set the allowable level at 75 parts per billion in 2008. In 2014, the EPA had proposed even stricter emissions limits on ozone of 65 to 70 parts per billion.
“Virtually every petitioner argues that, for one reason or another, the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in making its final [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] designations,” the opinion states. “But because the EPA complied with the Constitution, reasonably interpreted the Act’s critical terms and wholly satisfied—indeed in most instances, surpassed—its obligation to engage in reasoned decision-making, we deny the consolidated petitions for review in their entirety.”
Ground level ozone—the main ingredient in smog—forms when chemicals in fossil fuel emissions react with sunlight and air.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.