Energy

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is drawing criticism from environmentalists, a former top EPA official and others for mostly sidestepping the issue of climate change risks in his major speech on the agency’s 50th anniversary and his vision for its future, instead using climate to attack Democrats’ energy policies.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is arguing against any immediate remedy after a federal district judge found that it violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in approving a waterway crossing for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a decision that the agency is appealing.

EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has rejected a novel appeal from a Utah gas services company against its agency-imposed air permit, in a potentially precedent-setting dispute testing the boundaries of when an earlier consent decree between EPA and the company might shield some of its equipment from Clean Air Act regulation.

EPA’s long-awaited proposal expected to declare biomass as a carbon neutral fuel under Clean Air Act permits will not be issued until after the Nov. 3 election in part to avoid undercutting the agency’s defense of its Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule power plant climate rule, sources say.