Reps. David McKinley (R-WV) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR) are floating draft details of a plan to cut utilities’ greenhouse gas emissions that combines an immediate focus on technology programs with a longer-term “clean electricity standard” (CES), coupled with at least temporary preemption of existing EPA utility GHG rules.
Former EPA administrators and staff are outlining a guide for the agency to work with Congress on securing a public declaration for rebuilding EPA’s budget to its 40-year average in “real dollars,” proposing a four-year goal of hiking the total annual spending to the equivalent of $11.4 billion in 2019 dollars.
The resolution will be introduced one year after many of the same plaintiffs along with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg came to Washington, D.C. to demand action to curb climate change.
The White House’s rule is “certainly the most-far reaching” of the “administration’s ongoing effort to elevate polluters over people,” says House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ).
Maureen Sullivan, who has held leadership roles on environmental policy at the Defense Department for 28 years, is planning to retire, prompting a House lawmaker to lament the loss of “an incredible resource.”
Top Senate Democrats are pressing appropriators to provide more than $20 million for EPA’s regulatory and research work on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in fiscal year 2021, a significant boost over the funds that House lawmakers have already proposed appropriating for the agency.
Over three dozen lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate are urging the top lawmakers on defense policy committees to include a carbon capture bill in this year’s defense policy legislation.
Key senators say they have reached a bipartisan deal on legislation requiring EPA to implement a 15-year phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a compromise that could pave the way for enactment of the measure after months of clashing over the climate policy that has also stalled comprehensive energy legislation.
Two House Democrats from Michigan and almost 130 EPA employees from Seattle are pressing the agency to allow continued telework rather than require employees to return to their offices in Washington state and Ann Arbor, MI, arguing the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a major public health threat.
Environmental groups are grappling with the extent to which they should support using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn Trump administration environmental rollbacks, despite multiple recent calls to deploy the law to undo such deregulatory actions if Democrats sweep the Nov. 3 elections.
