environmental protection agency (epa)

Lars Plougmann, via Flickr

The US Environmental Protection Agency has a problem, and that problem is ethanol. Last Friday the EPA expanded its previous waiver on ethanol in gasoline to allow blends of up to 15% to be used in cars built in model year 2001 and later, compared to the earlier threshold of model year 2007. Because it did this just three months after...[read more]

This week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the use of 15% ethanol fuel blends (E15) for 2011-2006 model year cars: EPA Grants E15 Fuel Waiver for Model Years 2001 – 2006 Cars and Light Trucks WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today waived a limitation on selling gasoline that contains more than...[read more]

U.S. Government, via Wikimedia Commons

Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI), the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is making no secret of his plans for “an all-out push to block federal and state climate rules.”  Yesterday, Upton’s released his committee agenda for the new Congress, which includes detailed plans for blocking the Environmental Protection...[read more]

The Supreme Court will hear challenges by America's biggest power companies to a landmark appeals court ruling in Connecticut v. American Electric Power that they can be sued to curb their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.  Four coal-burning power companies – American Electric Power, Southern Company,...[read more]

The New York Times describes one of the hazards of doing new things: your new thing may not fit neatly into existing regulatory category. A case in point: Two new cars that can be recharged electrically are creating a puzzle for the Environmental Protection Agency, which must rate the “fuel economy” of passenger cars and light trucks...[read more]

A handful of stories of interest: The boom in shale gas has been a boon to homeowners who use gas, local economies with the resource, and manufacturers who make stuff with it, but it has “upended the ambitious growth plans of companies that produce power from wind, nuclear energy and coal. Those plans were based on the assumption that...[read more]

The Associated Press is reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency says it will wait until this fall to decide whether car engines can handle higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline. The agency had been expected to decide by this month whether to increase the maximum blend from 10 to 15 percent. The EPA said Thursday that...[read more]

They say truth is the first casualty in war.  Senator Murkowski is leading a war to destroy the Clean Air Act as a tool to combat climate change.  Her resolution to veto the Environmental Protection Agency’s science-based “endangerment” finding comes to a vote on Thursday.  And truth is suffering. Here are the three...[read more]

Late last year when Senator Lisa Murkowski announced she would vigorously oppose any effort to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions, environmental leaders in Washington understood the significance of the Alaska Republican's challenge. A loyal ally of fossil fuel developers, Senator Murkowski attracts more campaign...[read more]

President Obama on Friday directed the EPA and the Transportation Department to develop a national policy to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium and heavy-duty trucks in time for the 2014 model year. The action comes almost exactly one year (May 19, 2009) after President Obama set new fuel and...[read more]

The implications for the oil industry from the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill are already taking shape, with the administration calling for a Challenger-style investigation and rewriting the playbook for oil & gas leasing and the issuance of safety and environmental permits for offshore drilling. It's less clear how the spill...[read more]

So I finally finished my article about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plan to regulate under the Clean Air Act (CAA) greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. This is very timely given that agency published its final rule yesterday (and my deadline is this week). Here's a little bit of a snapshot of the GHG rule....[read more]

Today the Environmental Protection Agency issued rules to curb carbon pollution from big power plants and other big polluters under the Clean Air Act, while at the same time assuring the millions of small businesses – from mom and pop operations, to farms, to mid-sized manufacturing concerns – that they have nothing to worry about. The...[read more]

Originally posted at Huffington Post Yesterday, the EPA issued their long-awaited proposal for new rules on how to regulate the disposal and storage of coal combustion waste (CCW), the byproduct of coal-fired power plants. Since December of 2008, when more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash spilled into the Emory River from a...[read more]

New Rules Would Provide Varying Levels of Protection for NC's Waterways An update from our friends at Appalachian Voices... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled two options today to regulate coal ash waste from coal-fired power plants, amid concerns by environmental groups that one of the options would not be strong enough...[read more]