On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies voted to cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 34 percent. This would “prohibit the administration from spending on greenhouse gas rules for power plants,” despite a presidential memo directing the agency to do just that.
New research by RFF’s Dallas Burtraw and Matt Woerman reviews a key approach outlined by the president: using flexible approaches for regulating power plants, possibly through the Clean Air Act. They note that this approach gives states a leading role in the implementation of the regulation (subject to EPA approval), and recommend the EPA “evaluate a portfolio of stringency criteria to evaluate plans that introduce flexible approaches in different ways.” The authors also propose various metrics that the EPA should consider.
Interior Fracking Regulations
Also on Wednesday, the House Natural Resources Committee voted to block the Department of the Interior’s proposed rules regulating hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on federal lands. Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) was quoted saying that “duplicative, costly, and burdensome federal regulations are unnecessary and would hinder American energy production.”
In a blog post for Common Resources, RFF’s Nathan Richardson and Alan Krupnick write that similar arguments “miss the mark.” They explain that “the federal government’s rights are identical to those of any landowner” and that “the federal government . . . frequently require(s) users of those lands . . . to follow rules that go beyond general state regulations.”
