Here Be Dragons: Legal Threats to EPA's Proposed Existing Source Performance Standards for Electric Generating Units

• Date: 01 February 2015

45 ELR 10116 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 2-2015

C O M M E N T S

Here Be Dragons: Legal Threats

to EPA’s Proposed Existing

Source Performance Standards

for Electric Generating Units

by Eric Groten

Eric Groten is a 30-year Clean Air Act veteran. Since 2006, he has been a partner in Vinson & Elkins

LLC’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Section, resident in its Austin, Texas, oce.

A104-page “Legal Memorandum”1 accompany-

ing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s

(EPA’s) proposal of §111(d) Existing Source Per-

formance Standards (ESPS) for Electric Generating Units2

under the Clean Air Act (CAA)3 charts t he legal waters

the Agency will have to traverse if it adopts rules anything

like those it proposed. e need for so comprehensive a

map arises because EPA proposes a voyage far away f rom

where §111(d) has ever sailed.4 But unlike the 16th-century

explorers who ignored the dragon warnings at the edges of

1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Legal Memorandum for

Proposed Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Electric Util-

ity Generating Units [hereinafter Legal Memo], available at http://www2.

epa.gov/sites/production/les/2014-06/documents/20140602-legal-mem-

orandum.pdf.

2. U.S. EPA, Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Electric Util-

ity Generating Units, 79 Fed. Reg. 34830 (proposed June 18, 2014). EPA

assigns this rule several dierent names, depending on context, most fre-

quently calling it the “Clean Power Plan.” e name on the birth certicate

is an unusual choice, as “carbon” is not an EPA-designated pollutant at all,

much less the pollutant for which EPA proposes “guidelines.”

3. 42 U.S.C. §§7401-7671q, ELR S. CAA §§101-618.

4. Although unexplored, the territory is not uncharted: EPA is navigating from

a map handed to it by the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) in

2012. See Daniel Lashof et al., Closing the Power Plant Carbon Pollution

-

mate Polluters, NRDC Report No.12-11-A (Mar. 2013), available at http://

www.nrdc.o rg/air/ pollutio n-stand ards/fi les/pol lution- standard s-repor t.

pdf; see also Coral Davenport,   

Drew Emissions Blueprint, N.Y. T (July 6, 2014), http://www.nytimes.

com/2014/07 /07/us/how-en vironmentali sts-drew-blu eprint-for-o bama-

emissions-rule.html?_r=2. Much of what later appeared as an EPA proposal

their maps, here EPA actually will encounter the identied

dangers, which are so great a s to reduce to near zero EPA’s

prospects for safe crossing to its intended destination.

I. Where Has §111(d) Been?

As the Legal Memo acknowledges, §111(d) has a long but

tellingly undistinguished history:

Over the last forty ye ars, under CA A section 111(d), the

agency has reg ulated four pollutants from ve source

categories (i.e., phosphate fertilizer plants (uorides) [in

1977], sulfuric acid plants (acid mis t) [also in 1977], pri-

mary aluminum pla nts (uorides) [in 1980], Kraf t pulp

plants (total reduced sulfur) [in 1979], and municipal solid

waste landl ls (landll gases) [in 1996]).5

is limited and growingly distant history—consisting

of EPA guidelines recommending technology-based limits

for a few specic emission points within narrow industry

categories that emit an otherwise unregulated pollutant

signicantly emitted only by one or two industries—is

consistent with EPA’s long-expressed understanding of the

limited role that §111(d) is to play in CAA regulation.

A. Congress Intended Very Limited Use of §111(d)

In the overall CAA architecture, the ubiquitous pollut-

ants emitted by “numerous or diverse mobile or station-

ary sources”—a description never more applicable than to

greenhouse gases (GHG)—are to be regulated as “criteria

pollutants” through development of national ambient a ir

quality standards (NAAQS) under §§108 and 109, the des-

ignation of nonattainment areas u nder §107, and the state

in the Federal Register may be found within the pages of NRDC’s policy

paper, especially including its legal rationale.

5. Legal Memo, supra note 1, at 9-10.

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