The Environmental Protection Agency will miss an end-of-month target for proposing greenhouse gas regulations for power plants, the head of the EPA said on Wednesday.
The administration of President Barack Obama is under pressure from business to cut environmental regulation that critics say is hurting the economy, and last week Obama backtracked on smog plans.
The EPA is working on plans to limit greenhouse gases from power plants and oil refineries, and it had been targeting releasing some utility-focused proposals on September 30.
“Greenhouse gases for power plants is first on the docket,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said on the sidelines of an event in San Francisco. “Although we are not going to make the date at the end of the month, we are still working and will be shortly announcing a new schedule.”
The EPA also is working on the Mercury Air and Toxics Standards, the first national standards for mercury and acid gases from power plants. “We are still intending to finalize that ruling in November,” she said.
A separate set of standards for boiler emissions, called Maximum Achievable Control Technology, have been stayed and the agency plans to announce next steps in October, an agency spokeswoman said.
(Reporting by Peter Henderson; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
