EPA issues final greenhouse-gas rule, with no exemption for carbon emissions from biomass

Congress may not pass limits on carbon dioxide, but the Environmental Protection Agency keeps moving that way. It announced Thursday its final "tailoring" rule for greenhouse-gas emissions, targeting the emitters that release at least 100,000 tons of the gases per year. "EPA's rule 'tailors' permitting programs to limit the number of facilities that would be required to obtain New Source Review and Title V operating permits based on their greenhouse gas emissions," Robin Bravender of Greenwire reports for The New York Times. "EPA said the threshold would cover power plants, refineries and other large industrial plants while exempting smaller sources like farms, restaurants, schools and other facilities."

"Beginning next January, facilities that must already obtain New Source Review permits for other pollutants will be required to include greenhouse gases in their permits if they increase their emissions of the gases by at least 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year," Bravender writes. "On July 1, 2011, EPA will extend the requirements to new construction projects that emit at least 100,000 tons of greenhouse gases and existing facilities that increase their emissions by at least 75,000 tons per year, even if they do not exceed thresholds for other pollutants."

The new rule specifies that no sources that emit less than 50,000 tons per year will be subject to permitting requirements until at least April 30, 2016. The rule met praise from the environmental community, but industries were critical of the EPA's use of the Clean Air Act for greenhouse-gas regulation. "The Clean Air Act is not designed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and this tailoring rule doesn't fix the problems with the Clean Air Act doing it," Howard Feldman, director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, told Bravender. (Read more)

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry seized on Thursday’s announcement to argue for the urgency of passing his climate bill, Sindya N. Bhanoo of the Times reports. "Today we went from 'wake-up call' to 'last call,'" he said. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced a resolution in January that would strip EPA of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. (Read more)

The EPA rule does not exempt emissions from biomass power, which has rung alarm bells in the nascent industry. The final languiage "came as a bit of a surprise to us," said David Tenny, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners. the industry argues that when wood or other biomass is burned, the carbon dioxide that is released had been absorbed from the atmosphere by the trees, an analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council said it's not that simple. "The science around biomass continues to make clear that not all biomass is good from a carbon footprint perspective," Franz Matzner told Robin Bravender of Greenwire. "Chopping down a swath of forest that then gets turned into a parking lot and burning it puts carbon in the atmosphere that's not going to regrow." (Read more)