Florida and North Carolina regulators came to Congress on Tuesday for an assault on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to slash the emissions of planet-warming gases from power plants.
The proposal isn’t fair to Florida and could mean higher electric bills, argued the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission, Art Graham, to the House energy and power subcommittee. Donald van der Vaart, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said states shouldn’t have to create a plan to meet the federal standards until after the courts settle lawsuits seeking to derail the EPA’s climate effort.
Climate change has been a tough topic for politicians in both states, which have some of the longest coastlines on the Eastern Seaboard. Officials in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection say they were ordered not to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming.” Republican Gov. Rick Scott denies those reports but has declared himself unconvinced by the scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to warm.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a law in 2012 to stop any new rules based on a state science panel prediction that the sea would rise 39 inches in the state by the end of this century. North Carolina environmental regulator van Der Vaart told lawmakers Tuesday that he “will not address the scientific uncertainty of the impact human activity and greenhouse gases have on climate.”
He said the EPA’s proposal is illegal and his state should not have to submit a plan to meet the carbon pollution standards until the lawsuits are settled.
“If the EPA wants to transform America’s power system by forcing a round peg into the square hole . . . it should have the prudence to allow the final rule to be reviewed by the courts before requiring states to undertake such a Herculean effort,” van Der Vaart told the House energy subcommittee.
A dozen other states have sued the EPA, arguing the agency lacks the needed authority under the Clean Air Act. The plan is the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda and is aimed at lowering carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants, the largest U.S. source of planet-warming emissions.
Graham of the Florida Public Service Commission said the EPA is not giving his state enough credit for its widespread switch to cleaner-burning natural gas for electricity.
He said Florida faces coal plant closures under the plan and projections of billions of dollars in costs in order to meet the pollution standards.
Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor told Graham he’s ignoring the costs to Florida’s taxpayers from climate change effects like severe storms and rising sea levels.
“I find your testimony very curious, because the Florida Public Service Commission has not been on the side of consumers,” she said, citing the panel’s move to slash energy efficiency goals, among other things.
Republican lawmakers, though, joined the attacks on the EPA. Rep. Renee Elmers, R-N.C., said she thinks the plan will raise utility bills in her state and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., a coal supporter and chairman of the energy subcommittee, suggested the plan treats states like “marionettes of a federal puppeteer.”
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