The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released disappointing new rule delays in the Fall 2022 Unified Regulatory Agenda, falling further behind on nine key climate change and air quality regulations that would help reduce pollution in the power sector, leaving only one rule on track. In October 2022, Evergreen analysis found that EPA was falling behind on eight rules, with two on schedule.
This is deeply troubling: These delays threaten the Biden administration’s ability to finalize many of these important rules within their first term. And those that they do complete may be vulnerable to being blocked altogether by Republicans via the Congressional Review Act.
President Biden and the Environmental Protection Agency must be moving further, faster—not falling further behind.
Why Are These 10 Power Sector Rules Vital?
Last August, President Biden signed historic climate investments into law with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Multiple analyses by experts indicate that the IRA will help cut carbon pollution by around 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That leaves 10-12 percent still on the table to meet the president’s pledge to reduce carbon pollution 50-52 percent economy-wide by 2030.
To meet President Biden’s promises, EPA must pursue a coordinated, comprehensive regulatory strategy that targets power sector pollution. Cleaning up the power sector is critical to decarbonization—because cleaning up the grid significantly helps to clean up transportation, buildings, and some heavy industry.
It’s a domino effect. Focusing regulatory efforts on the power sector is a powerful, strategic way to address carbon pollution in almost every corner of the economy.
What’s at Stake?
It’s crucial that EPA finalizes these rules on a much faster timeline than they have committed to in the Unified Regulatory Agenda. EPA’s continued delays in their regulatory agenda laid out in the Unified Agenda not only threaten successful implementation of these rules, but have real-life health impacts on the American people. Waiting to finalize any rules tackling power sector pollution will mean exposing people around the country to more dangerous pollution that we know contributes to tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of illnesses every year, while the climate crisis worsens.
It’s also a matter of environmental justice: Black Americans are more likely to live near coal-fired power plants than their white counterparts. That means that these delays will perpetuate long-standing environmental injustices that President Biden campaigned on addressing.
EPA must make every effort to prevent further delay and advance the critical power sector rules that will help us reach President Biden’s climate and pollution commitments and meet the urgency of the moment.
