Small Business Groups Praise Obama’s Climate Stance, Call For Regulation Of Existing Power Plants

A coalition of groups representing over 150,000 American businesses and $9.5 trillion in collective assets signed a letter yesterday praising President Obama for his strong stance on climate policy in the State of the Union address.

In the letter, the business organizations Environmental Entrepreneurs, the American Sustainable Business Council, Ceres, and Green America Coming Together endorsed Obama’s new energy efficient and renewable power targets, as well as his commitment to “reduce carbon pollution, absent Congressional action, through existing federal authorities.” They also advocated for the executive branch to regulate carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants under the auspices of the Clean Air Act:

We understand the importance of certainty and clear market signals and believe national standards to reduce carbon pollution from new and existing power plants will clarify risks and opportunities for U.S. businesses, while also leading to technological innovation and investment in the domestic clean energy market… Ultimately, investing in cleaner technologies and more efficient resources can be a pathway to profit and prosperity, boosting economic growth and creating jobs while also providing competitive returns to investors.

We believe that the Clean Air Act currently presents the best option for reducing carbon pollution from power plants. We hope this Administration will quickly finalize the proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants and, as required by the Clean Air Act, move forward to propose a carbon reduction program for existing power plants.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and the obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions should it determine they’re a danger to public health and the environment. The EPA reached that conclusion in 2009, and is already close to finalizing rules to regulate carbon pollution from new power plants. What’s lacking are rules for already existing power plants, but there are signs of movement in that direction.

In the State of the Union, Obama called for the United States to double the amount of renewable electricity it produces by 2020, and to double its energy efficiency by 2030. He also urged Congress to pass a market-style solution to climate change, such as the cap-and-trade bill put together by former Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) several years ago.

Obama did not explicitly call for extending the EPA’s reach to existing power plants in the speech, but he did bluntly state, “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

The letter from the business groups comes on the heels of another letter from the Small Business Majority expressing similar support: “Our polling found 87 percent of small business owners believe improving innovation and energy efficiency are highly effective ways to increase prosperity for small businesses.”

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Obama Makes Case For Curbing Carbon Pollution From Existing Power Plants, Also Vows To Use ‘Bully Pulpit’

The President has (finally) been talking hawkish on climate. Turns out he now realizes that is part of his job! (Duh?)

In his second inaugural address, Obama said failing to respond to the threat of climate change “would betray our children and future generations.” In his State of the Union, Obama vowed to take executive action if Congress fails to pass a climate bill.

The most important action he can take without further Congressional approval is restricting emissions from existing coal-fired power plants using his authority under the Clean Air Act.

While he didn’t announce specific plans for such regulations in the SOTU, he did make the case for them during a recent Google+ hangout:

“The truth is if you produce power using old power plants, you’re going to be emitting more carbon — but to upgrade those plants, energy’s going to be a little bit more expensive, at least on the front end. At the core, we have to do something that’s really difficult for any society to do, and that is to take actions now where the benefits are coming down the road, or at least we’re avoiding big problems down the road,”

Watch it:

During the online video chat, he also said that speaking out on climate change is part of his job:

“Part of my job is to use the bully pulpit to help raise people’s awareness, because if the public cares about it, eventually Congress acts. If the public doesn’t care about it, it’s very hard to get big stuff done because legislators respond to their constituents sooner or later.”

That is quite a reversal from the climate silence Obama has practiced for much of the past years — a flawed strategy that team Obama actually pushed others to adopt starting back in March 2009. Let’s hope this is all more than rhetoric, something we will find out relatively soon — when he makes the final Keystone XL tar sands pipeline decision.

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Obama Likely To Push Curbs On Carbon Pollution From Existing Power Plants In State Of The Union

The Wall Street Journal reports the President will continue his push on climate action in his State Of The Union address next week.

The GOP-dominated House in particular is against passing any policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But even without Congress’s cooperation, the Executive Branch has a wide array of regulatory tools at its disposal to tackle the problem, particularly the Clean Air Act.

The President surprised almost everyone by devoting so much of his second inaugural address to climate, framing the issue in moral terms, “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” This raised expectations for the SOTU address.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama in next week’s State of the Union speech will lay out a renewed effort to combat climate change that is expected to include using his authority to curb emissions from existing power plants, people who have talked to the administration about its plans said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has already proposed rules, set to be finalized this spring, to limit carbon pollution emitted from new power plants to 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity. This would make the construction of new coal-fired power plants effectively impossible.

Mr. Obama is likely to signal he wants to move beyond proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules on emissions from new power plants and tackle existing coal-fired plants, people familiar with the administration’s plans said….

“You will ultimately see a proposal from EPA to regulate existing power plants,” one person familiar with the matter said. “How he talks about it in the State of the Union could be anything from, ‘We’ve taken important steps and we need to take more,’ to ‘We need to make more [progress] and the next one on the chopping block is existing sources’” of carbon emissions.

No final decisions about what the president will propose next Tuesday appear to have been made.

President Obama has already committed to reducing carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and the Energy Information Administration recently concluded we’re already at 9 percent below today. But further aggressive steps will be needed to prevent losing those gains and to close the rest of the gap.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled the EPA would be required to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act if it found that those emissions endangered public health and the environment. The agency came to that exact conclusion in 2009 — indeed, they did so in 2008 under President Bush, but he blocked making the endangerment finding.

EPA scientists noted that the climate change associated with carbon emissions will, for instance, increase the dangers posed by extreme weather, such as drought and floods, will worsen air pollution, and will boost the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves, with all the attendant threats to the health and welfare of Americans.

That in turn led to the EPA’s proposal to regulate carbon pollution from new power plants, and during the comment period for the proposal the agency received more than 3 million comments in favor of reducing carbon pollution from both new and existing power plants — a record for an EPA rule proposal. But up until now, the EPA hasn’t moved to reduce emissions from power plants already in operation.

Other steps the Executive Branch could take unilaterally to protect the environment and public health include adopting the “Tier 3? standard the EPA is working on to further reduce smog, using public lands and waters to promote clean energy projects, establishing more stringent renewable energy standards for utilities, and nixing the Keystone XL pipeline.

According to a former administration official who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, the President has been “pushing the team to get very specific about how to achieve the goals he set on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.” Obama will deliver the State of the Union speech next Tuesday, February 12.

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