Lindsey Graham vows legislation on carbon emissions
COLUMBIA – Churches, schools, restaurants and even large homes could fall under new federal regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gases, say state officials who want Congress to tackle the issue instead of the federal environmental agency.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he plans to do just that, joining in a bi-partisan bill that will be filed next month to pre-empt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations and provide a new cap and trade system that he said could help reduce the national debt, encourage the production of more alternative energy and move the nation closer to energy independence.
“This administration is not going to back off,” Graham told a group of business and environmental officials. “They are going to regulate carbon. If Congress doesn’t get involved, it’s going to be a disaster for this state and it’s going to be a disaster for every state.”
The EPA regulations stem from a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and a subsequent finding by the agency that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health.
Last fall, the agency announced that it would regulate such emissions from light-duty cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act, opening the door to regulation of stationary sources, including factories and power plants.
But because the agency is proceeding under the Clean Air Act, far more sources of greenhouse gas emissions could be regulated, meaning hospitals, restaurants, small businesses, commercial office buildings, schools and even large homes could end up having to pay fees and submit permit applications if they are being built or modified, said Myra Reece, chief of air quality for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
While EPA is seeking to increase that standard and isn’t expected to begin implementing the first parts of its regulations until next year, the prospect that churches and hospitals might be considered polluters has triggered a backlash from states.
Earlier this month, state Attorney General Henry McMaster joined with other states in a lawsuit challenging the EPA regulations. McMaster argued the new rules would cost the state jobs at a time of high unemployment and that the issue should be addressed by the state’s Legislature and Congress, not by a federal agency.
Many state legislatures have passed resolutions urging Congress to pre-empt EPA.
State environmental officials say their agency has urged EPA to push the emission thresholds much higher to catch the major air polluters, not hospitals or small businesses. If the current EPA regulations go forward, they say, permits such as the one they granted Boeing in under a month could take years.
Otis Rawl, president and CEO of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, asked Graham if EPA’s regulations were a form of “forced politics” by the administration of President Barack Obama, in effect creating harsh rules to prod Congress to do something.
Graham said he believes some of that is true but added that EPA acted far more quickly than members of Congress expected.
He said the solution is legislation that would pre-empt the regulations by exempting most of the sources EPA would regulate, such as offices, schools and hospitals.
Legislation also could create a carbon dioxide emission cap and trade program. Graham received criticism from within his own party last year after he joined forces with Democrats to propose such a carbon cap and trade bill.
He says the new legislation to be filed next month will apply a cap and trade system by industry sector instead of economy-wide as had been proposed.
“The cap and trade approach (for the whole economy) to regulating carbon would have been an economic disaster,” he said. “It would have run up utility bills for consumers. It would have put major projects at risk.”
In the new approach, Graham said, trading wouldn’t be applied to the oil and gas industry. Doing so, he argued, would send American refineries elsewhere.
Fees would be assessed on companies that create carbon products, such as oil companies, he said, and the money would be used either to reduce the national deficit or allow it to be spent on low-income Americans for use in transportation needs.
“It would set a price on carbon which would make hybrid cars more valuable,” he said. “The only way you are going to get away from foreign oil is to find more and use less.”
Trading of carbon credits would be restricted, he said, to prevent speculation.
Heavy energy users, such as companies that produce aluminum, cement and steel, would be removed from the cap and trade system for years because the technology doesn’t yet exist to capture carbon, he said.
Farmers would get credits for using techniques that don’t emit carbon dioxide.
The new legislation, Graham said, allows “more time, more tools -- the standards are more easily met, it’s more business-friendly.”
The bill would also allow offshore drilling, encourage nuclear power production and alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind power and bio-fuels. Such legislation could double the business of General Electric’s wind turbine plant in Greenville, he said.
“The goal is to reduce foreign oil dependency by a third in 15 years,” he said.
Doing nothing, he argued, “means South Carolina and other states get hit with burdens we can’t possibly bear.”
“The Supreme Court has allowed the regulation of carbon through the Clean Air Act,” he said.
“The question is, is Congress going to be smart enough to stop it? I want to stop the EPA from regulating carbon and allow elected officials to come up with a statutory scheme that not only cleans up the air, it creates jobs instead of losing jobs and gets this country on the path to energy independence.”
