Clean Air Act

Out With the Old, In With the New

A recent GAO report pulls together a lot of information about electricity generators, which shows how much of our air pollution problems are due to aging plants: Older electricity generating units—those that began operating in or before 1978—provided 45 percent of electricity from fossil fuel units in 2010 but produced a disproportionate share of emissions, …

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New journal issue on using the Clean Air Act to address greenhouse gas emissions

UCLA’s Journal of Environmental Law and Policy has just published its current issue, Volume 30, with all its content available free online in pdf format.  This volume is a special symposium issue, featuring articles relating to the use of the Clean Air Act to address greenhouse gas emissions.  Several of the articles’ authors were speakers …

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The Supreme Court Strikes Down the Clean Air Act

Not, not really.  Not yet. Dan is a much more generous person than I am, and so it should be unsurprising that he believes that the Affordable Care Act cases do not threaten environmental law.  I respectfully dissent. The Affordable Care Act seeks to establish laws for the health insurance industry — an industry that …

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Pollution markets haven’t stimulated innovation

One of the early claims in favor of a cap-and-trade approach to pollution control, as opposed to traditional command-and-control innovation, was that market incentives would better encourage innovation in pollution control techniques and technologies. On the other hand, legal scholars such as David Driesen have long contended that pollution markets can actually reduce innovation incentives. …

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EPA Unveils Carbon Standard for New Power Plants

This morning, U.S. EPA released its anticipated rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants.   The proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act purports to set national limits on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants can emit. Today we’re taking a common-sense step …

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One reason for anti-EPA riders

There’s been a lot of (appropriate) outrage over the efforts in the past year and a half by House Republicans to gut environmental protections through the use of appropriations riders.  Those efforts might well continue in the next appropriations cycle, especially since bashing the EPA is apparently a popular election-year activity for Republicans.  One of …

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Previewing a VERY Big Week for Environmental Law in the Courts

UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that late Sunday, February 26th, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier announced a one-week postponement of the trial in the BP oil spill case that had been scheduled to begin the next day.  The postponement is reportedly due to substantial progress that has been made in marathon settlement talks that …

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Why we have the EPA

Air quality in Beijing over the past week has reached horrifically bad levels. The U.S. Embassy’s air quality tracker went from “Hazardous” to “Beyond Index” on Dec. 4. Check out the depressing details via Treehugger and France 24. It looks like the Great Smog of London from 1952. England passed its Clan Air Act 4 …

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TRAIN Wreck!

From a political point of view, it’s really interesting to see this melding of special interest legislation with populist appeals to the economy. It’s a little discouraging to see these efforts to increase air pollution, however, if you or your family members happen to have asthma or other respiratory issues, or if you just care about the environment.

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What EPA should do with its delayed performance standards for GHGs

On September 15, EPA announced that it would not meet its September deadline for proposing performance standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution from power plants. (That is the second delay; this proposal was originally scheduled for July 2011.) Some are asking if this delay is a big deal, and several environmental leaders sent President Obama …

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