US environmental regulators said on Thursday they will propose rules starting in July requiring power plants and refineries to cut greenhouse gas emissions with available technologies. It was the Obama administration's latest move to tackle emissions blamed for warming the planet after Congress failed to pass the climate bill this year.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a timetable on the rollout of the rules as part of an agreement with states, including California and New York, and environmental groups that had sued the agency to move faster on greenhouse gases. President Barack Obama has pushed the EPA to regulate emissions even before the climate bill failed this year. The new rules will come on top of regulations starting on January 2 that require the biggest polluters to get permits for emitting greenhouse gases.
Under the timetable, the EPA will propose performance standards on power plants in July 2011 and on refineries by December next year. The rules would be finalised in the following year, in May for power plants, and November for refineries. New and existing plants will be required to adopt available technologies to reduce emissions of gases, though the EPA will allow them to choose their own approaches. The fossil fuel plants emit about 40 percent of US greenhouse gases.
"This is about taking a look at what technologies are available that can cost-effectively achieve reductions in greenhouse gases ... it's not establishing a tonnage (of emissions) that should be emitted or shouldn't be emitted," said Gina McCarthy, an EPA assistant administrator on air and radiation.
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