As the OTC gets underway to record numbers here in Houston, one oft repeated phrase from industry and government is that safety should come first. James Watson, head of BSEE, also announced that the government plans to speed up its rulemaking on safety requirements by skipping the “notice of proposed rulemaking” stage and going straight [...]  More »

Two weeks ago the Fifth Circuit released its opinion in Luminant v. EPA, (5th Cir. No. 10-60891, filed March 26, 2012) finding that the EPA’s decision to disapprove Texas Administrative Code 116.617 governing standard permits for pollution control equipment that “reduce or maintain currently authorized emission rates for facilities authorized by permit” was arbitrary and [...]  More »

Oral argument was held last week in the complex challenge to the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations for major stationary sources. Judges Tatel, Sentelle and Rogers of the DC Circuit showed a good grasp of the issues according to observers. Despite the intense interest in the case, it seems unlikely, however, that the outcome will be [...]  More »

It is expected that Senator Rand Paul’s attempt to get Senate approval for repeal of the EPA”s cross state poluution rule under the Congressional Expedited Repeal process will fail.  In my opinion, that is a good thing.  While Congress does and should have ultimate responsibility for the most importat legal policies, I don’t think the [...]  More »

Today’s decision of the Obama administration to withdraw new ozone rules is illegal, immoral, and costly to boot.  The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to revisit its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) every five years to ensure that they are adequate to protect the public health and safety.  In 2006, the Bush Administration [...]  More »

As Houston and Texas set new temperature and drought records, the power grid has come under increased stress.  Not just from demand, but because the water for cooling of some steam generation plants has become too warm for the the generation system.  While scientists have considered this possibility, the scale of the problem in Texas is quite problematic.  [...]  More »

Today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act effectively pre-empts federal common law nuisance actions against companies for harms due to emission of greenhouse gases.  Importantly though the Court let stand (divided 4-4) the notion that federal nusiance common law exists to control pollution (including greenhouse [...]  More »

There have been several significant actions regarding the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules under the Clean Air Act in the last few weeks.  You will recall that the EPA has already begun regulation under the Prevention of Significant Detioration program (PSD), and signaled that it would propose regulation of sources under the New Source Performance Standards [...]  More »

On June 1, the American Petroleum Institute (API) filed suit against the EPA claiming that its February request for more information from refineries to complete the benzene residual risk rule for refineries, was impossible to complete and thus arbitrary. One really has to understand the tortured history of this rulemaking in order to appreciate what [...]  More »

Last week the Tennessee Valley Authority settled with the EPA, and several states (most notably North Carolina) over charges of Clean Air Act violations and dangerous emissions from many of its coal fired power plants.   The settlement agreement requires the TVA to install several billion dollars worth of pollution control equipment or shut down eleven [...]  More »

The EPA released its long awaited air toxic standards for coal fired power plants yesterday.  Though it is required by the implementation of the CAA 1990 amendments, it has been a long slog.  In particular, the Bush EPA wanted to control some of the toxics such as Mercury through a cap and trade program, which [...]  More »

This week (Feb. 12, 2011), the state of South Dakota issued a draft permit for Best Available Control Technology for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to the Hyperion Energy Center, a massive new refinery.  As expected, the total technology the state is proposing to reduce greenhouse gases is for high energy efficiency. [...]  More »