Iowa Global Warming

The House’s approval of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill earlier this month was a remarkable political achievement and an important beginning to the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But in all the last-minute wheeling and dealing, the House bill acquired two big loopholes that the Senate must close.

The first loophole involves coal-fired power plants. Coal is the world’s most abundant fossil fuel — producing more than half the electricity in the United States — and also its dirtiest, with twice the carbon content of natural gas.

The House bill would limit emissions from coal-fired power plants in two ways. It imposes a cap on emissions from all industrial facilities that tightens slowly over time. It also sets tough performance standards on new power plants permitted after 2009, requiring emissions reductions of 50 percent or more. The bill would help underwrite advanced technologies capable of capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

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Iowa environmental policymakers say a little-known state law prohibits them from enacting stricter air quality requirements than those passed by the federal government.

Several current and former members of the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, which sets state environmental policy, say the state would have trouble limiting mercury and other toxic chemical emissions without fretting about legal challenges because of the law.

As a result, Iowa cannot easily follow the lead of several neighboring states, including Wisconsin and Illinois, which have passed laws calling for dramatic reductions in mercury and other toxic emissions in the coming years.

“It’s almost like, why even go through the commission?” EPC Commissioner Susan Heathcote said. “This is almost a waste of our time … when we don’t have the authority as a state to do anything but what the (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) requires.”

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The EPA announced today that it would review permits for mountaintop mining in two locations, based on concerns over water pollution. The projects to be evaluated are the Central Appalachia Mining’s Big Branch project in Pike County, Kentucky and the Highland Mining Company’s Reylas mine in Logan County, West Virginia. Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA is able to review Army Corps of Engineers proposals for mining projects.

Mountaintop removal mining is a type of coal mining in which land is removed in order to expose the coal seams underneath. The land is then dumped into the surrounding valley, where it is expected it pollutes and damages waterways. The EPA finds the Army Corps’ plans for regulating environmental impacts of the two projects unsatisfactory and hopes to meet with them to discuss this.

This action is thought to be a great step forward in the regulation of environmentally damaging mining practices. Ed Hopkins, the environmental quality program director for the Sierra Club stated, ”This is an extremely significant action to put a stop to the devastating practice of mountaintop removal. This isn’t just one permit that the EPA is looking at; this is an entire industry practice.”

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A rule was proposed Tuesday by the EPA that would require 13,000 factories, power plants and other facilities to record and report all greenhouse gas emissions. It would be put into effect under the Clean Air Act and would require the reporting of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases.

“This is the foundation of any serious program to cap and reduce global warming pollution,” said David Doniger, policy director for the climate center at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC).

The data compiled through this rule is meant to later assist in the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. It will cover 85 to 90 percent of greenhouse gases in the US. Small businesses will be exempt from reporting.

There will be a 60-day comment period and two public hearings on the rule. If put into effect, industries will begin to monitor emissions in 2010 and report in 2011.

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In an interview earlier this week, the head of the E.P.A. Lisa Jackson said she had asked her staff to begin filing an “endangerment” claim concerning carbon emissions from new coal power plants. The final decision on the matter, expected to come sometime just before the April 2nd anniversary of the Mass. Vs. EPA decision, will have a profound effect on utlities, transportation, and the political clout of the U.S. at the upcoming United Nations Climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

The announcement comes as signal of a reversal of one of the last policies of the Bush era, which stated that carbon emissions should not be considered when granting permits for new coal power plants. The E.P.A. has recently begun citing internationally-supported findings suggesting that global warming gas emissions are having a negative effect on the worlds economy and health, and hence is likely to find that the U.S. should begin the process of regulating them.

Though the decision itself does not necessarily constitute the creation of a new “law,” it could possibly begin one of the largest policy-adjustments in American history, the New York Times reported yesterday. “We are poised to be specific on what we regulate and on what schedule,” Ms. Jackson said. Still-the undertaking will be massive.

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President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next Energy Secretary, Democratic sources said today. He also has picked veteran regulators to fill out his environmental and climate team.

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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