Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is messing with the EPA (link goes behind a pay firewall).
Greg Abbott, the state’s GOP attorney general, filed suit Wednesday in federal court in Washington, seeking to immediately halt implementation of the Obama administration’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule aimed at slashing power plant emissions across 27 states.
Abbott’s spokeswoman, Lauren Bean, told Bloomberg that the attorney general “is deeply concerned about these new federal regulations’ impact on the state of Texas, its electric grid and the Texans whose access to something as basic as electricity is threatened.”
Kansas GOP Attorney General Derek Schmidt also sued EPA on Monday over the same regulations, saying the agency gave the state just five months to get its electric utilities ready for the rule.
“It will be physically impossible for all of our utilities to comply, which means that either Kansans will be paying higher rates to buy out-of-state electricity or there simply will not be enough electricity to meet Kansas demand after the first of the year,” Schmidt said in a press release. “Neither of those is an acceptable option.”
EPA officials say they’ve done extensive analytical work to show that Texas and Kansas industries are causing air pollution problems in downwind states, a threshold under the Clean Air Act that allows them to be included in the trading program for sulfur dioxide.
“Trading program.” Isn’t that cap and trade* without the legislation (since that stalled in Congress when the Democrats controlled it)? And despite what the spokesperson says above, the EPA’s own science showed that Texas emissions have little impact on other states.
More about the lawsuit here. Texas energy giant Luminant has cited the EPA’s rule in its decision laying off 500 Texas workers.
*Update: No, I got that cap and trade bit wrong. Apparently that trading program originates from the Bush 41 era.
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