WASHINGTON — Facing wide criticism over their recent finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public welfare, top Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday that any regulation of such gases would be phased in gradually and would not impose expensive new rules on most American businesses.

The E.P.A.’s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wrote in a letter to eight coal-state Democrats who have sought a moratorium on regulation that only the biggest sources of greenhouse gases would be subjected to limits before 2013. Smaller ones would not be regulated before 2016, she said.
“I share your goals of ensuring economic recovery at this critical time and of addressing greenhouse gas emissions in sensible ways that are consistent with the call for comprehensive energy and climate legislation,” Ms. Jackson wrote.

The eight Democratic senators, led by John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said hugely significant decisions about energy, the economy and the environment should be made by elected representatives, not by federal bureaucrats.

The senators, who earlier questioned broad cap-and-trade legislation pushed by the Obama administration, join a number of Republican lawmakers, industry groups and officials from Texas, Alabama and Virginia in challenging the proposed E.P.A. regulations of industrial sources. Senate Republicans are going a step further, seeking to prevent the agency from taking any action to limit greenhouse gases, which are tied to global warming.

Ms. Jackson warned that if the Republicans thwarted the agency’s efforts to address climate change, it would kill the deal negotiated last year to limit carbon pollution from cars and light trucks and would have a chilling effect on the government’s scientific studies of global warming.

“It also would be viewed by many as a vote to move the United States to a position behind that of China on the issue of climate change, and more in line with the position of Saudi Arabia,” Ms. Jackson wrote.

The group led by Mr. Rockefeller asked Ms. Jackson to suspend any E.P.A. regulations of stationary sources — including coal-burning power plants and large industrial facilities — while Congress considers comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. The House passed a major climate and energy bill last summer that would have overridden some of the agency’s regulatory authority. The Senate, however, has not acted on the issue and there is considerable doubt that it will do so this year.

“E.P.A. actions in this area would have enormous implications, and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a federal environmental agency,” Mr. Rockefeller said.

The Democrats who joined Mr. Rockefeller are Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Begich of Alaska, Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Max Baucus of Montana.

Manufacturers, oil companies and business coalitions also filed petitions objecting to the proposed rules.

Environmental advocates said the E.P.A. was justified in declaring carbon dioxide and gases that contribute to global warming to be dangerous pollutants under the Clean Air Act and was moving cautiously to regulate them.

“These answers from Lisa Jackson hopefully will reassure the authors of the letter that the E.P.A. is proceeding in a very measured way and doing what is achievable and affordable to curb global warming pollution and focusing as they should on the biggest sources like power plants and not small businesses,” said David Doniger, climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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A window of opportunity is opening for solar power in the Midwest. The Environmental Law & Policy Center is working to ensure that we seize this opportunity promote solar power development that creates new jobs, spurs economic growth and helps to solve our global warming pollution problems.

Why the time is right to ramp up solar power in the Midwest:

• The economic outlook for solar power is the best it’s been in many years. Solar photovoltaic (PV) module prices have come down to historic lows and recent federal energy legislation and the economic stimulus package are making solar projects more affordable.

• Solar power can bring good returns on investment by meeting our needs during times of peak electrical demand. When we use higher than average amounts of energy, utilities need to buy power on the open market at very expensive rates. Peak demand happens during daylight hours and especially in the summer. Solar power matches up well with pricey peak demand times.

• Former industrial sites in the Midwest can be revitalized as solar power plants. These sites can house 10 – 20 MW projects, large enough to make economic sense and small enough to fit onto the grid. Locating solar plants on older industrial sites gives them unobstructed sunlight and low-cost access to the electrical grid.  The new 10 MW solar plant South Side of Chicago is a perfect example.

• In the current economic downturn, there are plenty of skilled workers looking for “green jobs” like installing solar systems.  Federal and state job creation grants, subsidies, credits and training programs for green jobs are all making it easier to hire workers. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is (re-) training new skilled solar installers at facilities in Illinois, Indiana and other states.

• State and federal policies are working to support solar power. For example, Illinois added a provision to the state’s renewable energy standard that will drive a market for 700-750 megawatts of solar power in the state by 2015.  Midwestern states are streamlining rules for connecting solar to the grid and creating net metering standards that will help solar generators get a good price for the power they generate. Expanding net metering policies to cover larger projects will boost 

solar even more.

People might think solar power only makes sense in places like Arizona and Nevada. But there are some good solar sites here in the Midwest. We’ve got better solar intensity here than both Germany and Japan, the world’s largest solar markets.

What we’re doing:

The right policies can extend this window of opportunity into the future. The Environmental Law & Policy Center and our colleagues are advocating for an earlier ramp up of solar power in Illinois’ renewable energy standard.  We are working on feed-in tariff models in Michigan and with colleagues in Iowa to improve the state’s net metering policies.  As Wisconsin considers boosting its Renewable Energy standard in 2010, there may also be opportunities to include solar provisions.  We have an opportunity to gain solar policy improvements as the unusually low prices and federal economic stimulus incentives drive significant solar development.

Watch ELPC’s Webinar on Solar Power in the Midwest

Watch ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner talk about Midwestern solar power at the nation’s largest urban solar plant in Chicago.

Obama’s remarks came at the end of his first quarterly meeting with the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which was created in February to provide the administration with independent, nonpartisan advice on how to promote economic growth and stability.

The focus of Wednesday’s meeting, which was streamed live on the White House Web site, was job creation and green energy.

Obama told the board members he’s seen “some return to normalcy” in parts of the financial markets.
“But obviously, one of the things I’ve been concerned about since I took office is looking beyond the immediate crisis in front of us to find out what is a sustainable economic model, post bubble and bust,” he said.

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“I’m hoping that the American people will wake up,” he said, “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen.” Foretelling action on his part and that of the Energy Department, he compared the current American state of mind to that of “A family buying an old house and being told by an inspector that it must pay a hefty sum to rewire it or risk an electrical fire that could burn everything down.”

Chu went on to cite specifically the serious droughts being experienced out west due to increasingly diminished snow packs in the Sierra Mountains, painting a grim picture of a potentially farm-less California.

The solution? Chu advocates more clean energy research, infrastructure, a national renewable electricity standard, and a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system. Sounds good to us.

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Obama plans to name Carol Browner, who led the Environmental Protection Agency for eight years under President Clinton, to fill a new White House post overseeing energy, environmental and climate policies, the sources said.

Obama has also settled on Lisa P. Jackson, chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) and former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, to head the EPA. Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles for energy and environment, will chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The son of highly educated Chinese immigrants, Chu won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work in the “development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.”

But, in an interview last year with The Post, Chu said that he began to get more interested in energy and climate change several years ago. “I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed,” he said. “Many of our best basic scientists realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation.”

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