Air Quality

Subscribe to Air Quality via RSS

The march toward mandated corporate disclosures for climate-related risks continues. Despite significant pushback and substantial legal challenges, state legislatures and regulators are continuing to advance laws and rules that will require disclosures of both greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate risks.

California Senate Bill (SB) 219, signed into law…

On March 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the long-awaited Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Rule (Final Rule), which concluded a nearly decadelong process — spanning three administrations — to update EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued its long-awaited climate reporting requirements, making it mandatory for the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. to annually disclose both greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their material climate risks, with some requirements kicking in as early as 2025. On March 6, the SEC voted 3-2 along party lines to pass a pared down version of its March 2022 proposal, giving regulated companies the final word on the much-anticipated rule.

Exercising one of its most important and far-reaching powers under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has lowered the primary annual National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 12 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3) down to 9 ug/m3, changing the game on air quality permitting for much of the U.S. EPA’s February 7, 2024 final rule, which will become effective 60 days following its publication in the Federal Register, represents a reversal of the Trump administration’s decision to retain the PM2.5 standard of 12 ug/m3 set under the Obama administration in 2012. The lower standard will set off a chain reaction of additional requirements for state air agencies, and ultimately industrial sources, in places designated as nonattainment with the new standard, but one impact of the new standard will be felt almost immediately: increased difficulty in obtaining air permits.

For anyone involved in the first round of the Clean Air Act regional haze program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) action on the first business day of 2024 came as no surprise: EPA proposed to disapprove the regional haze plan for Kansas. If the past is any indication of the future, this proposal foreshadows what will likely be many more regional haze state plan disapprovals over the next 12 months, given that EPA has already been hauled into court once again to force it back on schedule.

On October 7, 2023, California Governor Newsom signed two landmark bills into law, Senate Bill (SB) 253 and SB-261, imposing new requirements on large companies doing business in California to publicly report their annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate-related risks. These laws apply to both publicly traded and privately held companies, exceeding the scope of the climate disclosure rule proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March 2022. Our professionals have prepared a more detailed summary here; some key highlights are included below.

EPA’s long-promised rules for reducing CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants have now been published. In the proposal, EPA lays out “performance standards” for new natural gas-fired power plants and “emission guidelines” for states to use in developing standards for existing gas- and coal-fired power plants.

Much ado is being made of recent amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA) contained in the Biden administration’s budget reconciliation law passed in mid-August, commonly referred to as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). And with good reason, as the law includes the most significant changes to the CAA since 1990, and the new sections formally define greenhouse gases (GHGs) as an “air pollutant,” consistent with the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.

However, the IRA amendments to the CAA do not in fact make significant substantive changes in law. Legally speaking, they can’t, given that the IRA is merely a reconciliation bill through which Congress may only assign funding. More to the point, none of the IRA amendments to the CAA address in any way the limitations the Supreme Court recently placed on EPA’s authority to adopt climate change regulation in West Virginia v. EPA, notwithstanding some characterizations to the contrary.