Lawmakers Debate Carbon Tax; Studies Offer Look at Economic Impacts

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: TODAY is the last issue of The Climate Post. Sign up now to receive future mailings like this one to understand developments that could shape the energy and climate landscape. Our mailings deliver timely, in-depth, and fact-based analysis, through thought pieces and research publications, to improve environmental policy making. They also alert subscribers to events that aim to shed light on critical climate and energy issues breaking or on the horizon.

As lawmakers plan to vote on an anti-carbon tax resolution from House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), another Republican is expected to roll out carbon tax legislation as early as next week.

According to a draft copy obtained by ClimateWire, Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) is preparing to introduce legislation that would eliminate the federal gas tax and impose a $23-per-ton tax on carbon emissions from energy industry operations. Some portion of the proposed tax, Bloomberg BNA reports, could be dedicated to increasing incentives for carbon capture and storage and clean technology and to assistance for low-income families affected by an uptick in energy costs related to putting a price on carbon.

“It really attempts to capture the political energy of the moment,” said Curbelo, who would not go into details about the pending legislation. “We know that infrastructure investment is highly popular in our country. It’s probably the only issue that [President] Trump and [Democratic nominee Hillary] Clinton agreed on in 2016.”

Tuesday, in a meeting of the House Rules Committee, the pending Curbelo bill came up during a debate over the Scalise and McKinley anti-carbon-tax resolution, which the committee passed in a 7-3 vote along party lines. A vote on that resolution by the House could come as early as Thursday.

A special issue in the journal Energy Economics highlights carbon tax modeling studies conducted through the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum Project. The issue includes an overview of the results co-authored by Brian Murray of the Duke University Energy Initiative and a faculty affiliate at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and an article on carbon tax implications for market trends and generation costs by my Nicholas Institute colleague Martin Ross. Comparison of the modeling studies’ results revealed similar conclusions: that a carbon tax is effective at reducing carbon pollution, although the structure of the tax and rate at which it rises are important, and that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would have a modest impact on gross domestic product. Even the most ambitious carbon tax was found to be consistent with long-term positive economic growth.

China, EU Renew Commitments to Meet Paris Climate Commitments

China and the European Union (EU) on Monday reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement to limit global warming, issuing a joint statement in which they also vow to work together in that pursuit. Amid fear that U.S. withdrawal from the agreement could undermine global cooperation on climate change, the statement issued at the 20th EU-China summit in Beijing said the climate accord is proof that “multilateralism can succeed in building fair and effective solutions to the most critical global problems of our time.”

The statement included plans to push for an agreement on a rulebook for the Paris Agreement after negotiations stalled this year; to release long-term, low-carbon development strategies by 2020; and to increase each side’s efforts before 2020; and to exchange knowledge on clean energy.

Notably, the joint statement extends cooperation on emissions trading schemes. China’s carbon market, which launched late last year, will, when fully implemented, be the largest in the world, covering an estimated 4 billion metric tons of emissions.

China, which has already met its 2020 target for carbon intensity, and the EU, which has met its 2020 emissions reduction target, also renewed their commitment to create a mechanism to transfer $100 billion a year from richer to poorer nations to assist them with climate change adaptation.

California Beats 2020 Emissions Target; Work Left on Transportation

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) released data revealing a decrease of approximately 2.7 percent in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2016—a decrease that dropped the state’s emissions below 1990 levels four years earlier than the state’s 2020 target date specified in Assembly Bill 32.

The emissions reductions owe to a mix of state-level measures that include a mandate that a certain fraction of electricity come from renewable resourcesregulation of vehicle emissions, and a carbon pricing and trading program shared with Quebec.

There was an exception to the downward emissions trajectory. The state’s transportation emissions continue to rise. Right now, the Trump administration has plans to ease the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE standards. California has vowed to stick to its own, stricter standards authorized under the Clean Air Act, but if miles-per-gallon targets for the state are rolled back, California’s transportation emissions could rise further.

For months, the state has been in conversations with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about its vehicle emissions rules, which several other states (most recently, Colorado) follow. Earlier this week, the newly nominated EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler met with top California officials about the matter. Although CARB Chair Mary Nichols called the meeting “pleasant,” she said “in terms of if there is a difference between Wheeler and Pruitt on these issues, I have yet to see any. It’s not better or worse; it’s the same.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Draft Rule to Replace Clean Power Plan Moves Ahead

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The last issue of The Climate Post will circulate on July 19. Sign up to receive future mailings like this one to understand developments that could shape the energy and climate landscape. Our mailings deliver timely, in-depth, and fact-based analysis, through thought pieces and research publications, to improve environmental policy making. They also alert subscribers to events that aim to shed light on critical climate and energy issues breaking or on the horizon.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Monday that it sent a proposed rule to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, a standard step before a proposal’s public release and comment.

The proposed rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, which was finalized in 2015 to regulate emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants by setting state-by-state reduction targets. Although not yet publicly released, early reports indicate the new rule will adopt a narrower assessment of the means available to reduce greenhouse gases and therefore will implement less aggressive emissions reduction targets.

In October 2017, the Trump administration issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that called for the Clean Power Plan to be repealed. In December 2017, EPA put out a notice asking the public to submit ideas for a replacement to the rule, which most agree the agency is obligated to produce. The Clean Air Act instructs the EPA to set “standards of performance for any existing source for any air pollutant,” and requires these standards to reflect “the degree of emission limitation achievable through the application of the best system of emission reduction.”

Since April 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has extended a temporary stay of the Clean Power Plan five times as the Trump administration contemplates a replacement.

The Monday nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy could influence how litigation over this rule plays out. Kennedy was often the deciding vote in environmental cases brought before the court, including the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA climate change lawsuit in 2007 that laid the legal groundwork for federal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Kavanaugh voiced some skepticism that the EPA has the authority to limit greenhouse gases when his court heard oral arguments on the Clean Power Plan in 2016.

“Global warming isn’t a blank check” for the president to regulate carbon emissions,” he said during oral arguments. “I understand the frustration with Congress,” Kavanaugh added. But he said the rule, rather than Congress, was “fundamentally transforming an industry.”

Pruitt Resigns from the EPA

Scott Pruitt has resigned as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Andrew Wheeler, who was confirmed by the Senate as the deputy administrator of the EPA in April, will now serve as the agency’s acting administrator. Wheeler, largely identified by the press as a coal industry lobbyist, began his career as an EPA employee and then oversaw the agency for years as chief of staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for Chairman James Inhofe.

Pruitt left the EPA facing more than a dozen inquiries into his spending and self-dealing practices and amid debate over his revisitation of six pollution policies during his 17 months. He cited in his resignation letter that these “unrelenting attacks” had taken a toll.

“It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring,” Pruitt wrote.

What’s next is uncertain, but Wheeler has suggested that the EPA likely won’t change its priorities after Pruitt.

“If the environmentalists think [Trump is] going to make promises and we’re going to do the opposite, then there’s not a lot of common ground to work on,” said Wheeler. “I’m going to continue to move forward with those” priorities Pruitt laid out on behalf of Trump.

The Washington Post reported that although policy priorities are expected to remain the same, what may change is the way the EPA talks about deregulatory work.

Culturally, Wheeler also may bring change. In his opening speech with EPA employees, Wheeler reassured agency staff, saying “[t]o the employees, I want you to know that I will start with the presumption that you are performing our work as well as it can be done. My instinct will be to defend your work, and I will seek the facts from you before drawing conclusions.”

Study Finds Coal Bailout Proposal Could Increase Premature Deaths, Carbon Dioxide Emissions

A working paper released by the independent think tank Resources for the Future finds that if  President Donald Trump’s proposed bailout of coal-fired power plants goes into effect in 2019 and 2020 it could lead to the pollution-related deaths of 353 to 815 Americans. The paper indicates that each year the policy could cause 1 death for each 2 to 4.5 of the estimated total 790 coal-mine jobs estimated to be supported by the bailout.

According to the authors, delayed retirement of coal that have announced they will close by the end of 2020 could cause these deaths due to their additional sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The paper’s modeling simulations show that over the two-year period the policy would increase carbon dioxide emissions by 22 million tons, or about the amount emitted by 4.3 million cars in a year. Applying the policy to nuclear generators would prevent only 24 to 53 premature deaths and 9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the period.

The authors call these mortality estimates “conservative” in part because the number of plants prevented from retiring could be larger than the number modeled.

The assessment, which assumes that the Trump administration’s possible action would delay closure of some 3 percent of U.S. coal-fired generation capacity and 1 percent of U.S. nuclear capacity, is one of the first examinations of the evolving plan to prop up coal and nuclear power plants that are struggling to compete with power plants using cheap natural gas and renewable electricity.

That proposed bailout, outlined in a memo in May, would use a Cold War-era law to keep aging coal and nuclear plants from shuttering. On June 1, Trump ordered U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take immediate action to keep those plants open.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions

EPA to Roll Back Car Pollution Standards

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday announced that greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and light duty trucks should be revised.

“The Obama Administration’s determination was wrong,” said Pruitt. “Obama’s EPA cut the Midterm Evaluation process short with politically charged expediency, made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.”

The EPA did not indicate how far the rules should be rolled back, only that it would begin drafting new standards for 2022–2025 with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which manages a parallel set of rules called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards.

The announcement follows an April 1 deadline requiring the EPA to reopen the standards or leave them alone—a review resulting from 2011 negotiations between the Obama administration and carmakers, which wanted an opportunity to reassess the standards. The standards presently require new cars and trucks to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Pruitt’s announcement also called out California, which is authorized under the Clean Air Act to set its own fuel standards. California was part of the 2011 deal, agreeing to stand down on its authority in return for a more aggressive national standard. The Golden State together with a dozen other states that follow California’s rules, account for more than one-third of the vehicles sold in the U.S.

“It is in America’s best interest to have a national standard, and we look forward to partnering with all states, including California, as we work to finalize that standard,” Pruitt said.

A joint statement by the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the mayors of Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle denounced the EPA’s decision to weaken standards.

“This move sets us back from years of advancements by the automotive industry put in motion by states that took the lead in setting emission standards,” they wrote. “These standards have cleared the haze and smog from our cities and reversed decades of chronic air pollution problems, while putting more money in consumers’ pockets.”

California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols hinted that California would contest the EPA’s decision.

“California will not weaken its nationally accepted clean car standards, and automakers will continue to meet those higher standards, bringing better gas mileage and less pollution for everyone,” said Nichols. “This decision takes the U.S. auto industry backward, and we will vigorously defend the existing clean vehicle standards and fight to preserve one national clean vehicle program.”

Hearings on Virginia Emissions Trading Rule End; Comment Period up Monday

A 90-day public comment period on Virginia’s draft regulations to cut carbon emissions from power plants ends Monday. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) began developing the proposed rules after then Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order last year to assess the impact of climate change on the state.

The draft plan aims to cap emissions from the state’s electricity sector beginning in 2020 and to reduce them 30 percent by 2030. It also establishes a carbon trading market that will link to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). If the plan is approved, Virginia would be the state with the largest carbon footprint affiliated with RGGI—a nine-state cap-and-trade program designed to reduce carbon emissions from electric power plants.

“Although Virginia would not be formally part of RGGI—it needs legislation for this—the state is forging a new path for other states interested in a similar linkage,” said Kate Konschnik, director of the Climate and Energy Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. “Virginia is designing a carbon program that meets its needs and links to a mature carbon market to ease utility compliance. This may be the wave of the future for RGGI.”

The last of six public hearings on the draft wrapped up last month. DEQ expects the final regulations to go before the state’s Air Pollution Control Board this summer.

Warming Waters Are Speeding Retreat of Glaciers, Raising Sea Levels

A satellite tracking study of Antarctica’s glaciers by researchers at the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds finds evidence of accelerated Antarctic deglaciation that could greatly increase global sea-level rise. Published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study shows that the warming waters of the Southern Ocean melted 565 square miles of Antarctica’s underwater ice between 2010 and 2016. It shows that the warming is moving “grounding lines”—the boundary where an ice sheet’s base leaves the sea floor and begins to float.

The researchers produced the first complete map of how the Antarctic ice sheet’s grounding lines are changing. They say grounding line retreat has been extreme at eight of the ice sheet’s 65 biggest glaciers. There the pace of deglaciation is five times the historical average of 25 meters per year since the last ice age.

Overall, the researchers found that 10.7 percent of Antarctic grounding lines were retreating at a rate faster than that average; only 1.9 percent of the lines were advancing faster than the average.

These new measurements suggest a pattern of melting in Antarctica that is contributing to global sea level rise, according to lead author Hannes Konrad from the University of Leeds.

“Our study provides clear evidence that retreat is happening across the ice sheet due to ocean melting at its base, and not just at the few spots that have been mapped before now,” said Konrad. “This retreat has had a huge impact on inland glaciers, because releasing them from the sea bed removes friction, causing them to speed up and contribute to global sea level rise.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Report Says Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions on the Rise

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) first Global Energy and CO2 Status Report, released last week, had two major findings: preliminary estimates for 2017 suggest that global energy demand rose 2.1 percent—more than twice the previous year’s rate—and carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 percent, the first time they’ve increased in three years. Although emissions increased in most countries, they decreased in the United States and several other countries largely due to renewable energy deployments.

“The significant growth in global energy-related in 2017 tells us that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, who identified “a dramatic slowdown in the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency” as one of the causes.
That improvement in energy efficiency slowed from a rate of 2.3 percent a year over the last three years to 1.7 percent last year. Meanwhile, some 70 percent of 2017’s increased energy demand was met by fossil fuels. Emissions decreases in the United States, the U.K., Japan, and Mexico were insufficient to cancel out the increases in China and India.

According to the report, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions reached a historical high of 32.5 gigatons in 2017, and current efforts to curb them are insufficient to meet Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Global emissions need to peak soon and decline steeply to 2020; this decline will now need to be even greater given the increase in emissions in 2017,” the report says.

Some of the report’s other findings:

  • Oil demand grew by 1.6 percent, more than twice the average annual rate over the past decade, driven by the transport sector and rising petrochemical demand.
  • Natural gas consumption grew 3 percent, the most of all fossil fuels, driven by China and the building and industry sectors.
  • Coal demand rose 1 percent, reversing declines over the previous two years, driven by an increase in coal-fired electricity generation, mostly in Asia.
  • Renewables had the highest growth rate of any fuel, meeting a quarter of world energy demand growth.
  • Electricity generation increased by 3.1 percent, much faster than overall energy demand, with India and China accounting for most of the growth.
  • Fossil fuels accounted for 81 percent of total energy demand, continuing a three-decades-long trend.

Decision on Tailpipe Emissions Standards Expected

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is up against an April 1 deadline to determine whether to loosen vehicle tailpipe emissions standards for the years 2022 to 2025, leave them unchanged, or increase them. Reports in the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets suggest the decision is likely to indicate that future vehicle emissions standards should be eased.

The rules, negotiated with the vehicle industry in 2011, presently require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

“The draft determination has been sent to OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and is undergoing interagency review,” said Liz Bowman, an EPA spokeswoman. “A final determination will be signed by April 1, 2018, consistent with the original timeline.”

Unclear is how a decision to ease standards might affect California, which can set its own fuel standards and is authorized to do so under the Clean Air Act. The state has suggested it may withdraw from the nationwide program if the EPA eases regulations.

“California is not the arbiter of these issues,” said Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator, in an interview with Bloomberg. The state “shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”

“We have not seen the document in question, and California had no input into its content,” said California Air Resources Board spokesman Stanley Young. “We feel strongly that weakening the program will waste fuel, increase emissions and cost consumers more money. It’s not in the interest of the public or the industry.”

EPA Holds Final Clean Power Plan Hearing

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrapped up public hearings concerning its repeal of the Clean Power Plan—an Obama-era regulation that sets state-by-state carbon emissions reduction targets for power plants—in Wyoming on Tuesday. All public comments on the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan are due April 26.

Dialogue in Tuesday’s hearing followed the trend of the EPA’s three other public hearings, with some arguing that the Clean Power Plan is needed to combat climate change and others questioning its effectiveness in achieving climate goals. One point of contention is how the costs and benefits of the rule were calculated. Opponents say the benefits were inflated and the costs were minimized. Supporters say the rule actually undercounts the additional benefits of reducing hazardous air pollutants.

The EPA was expected do away with the signature climate regulation, which the Supreme Court stayed in early 2016 and which would require the U.S. electricity sector to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by up to 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. But the Trump administration might consider a replacement at the urging of power companies fearful that a repeal could trigger courtroom challenges that would lead to years of regulatory uncertainty.

Any replacement rule may be affected by the EPA’s plans to propose measures to limit which studies the EPA can use in pollution rules—measures that could potentially reduce calculation of the health benefits that come along with controlling carbon dioxide emissions.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Study: Cutting Emissions Sooner Could Save 153 Million Lives This Century

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

A new study suggests that premature deaths linked to air pollution would fall across the globe if nations agree to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels rather than postponing emissions cuts and allowing warming to reach 2 degrees Celsius. The research funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), led by scientists at Duke University, and published in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that targeting the more ambitious of the Paris Agreement’s two temperature goals—although more costly—could avoid 153 million premature deaths.

“The lowest-cost approach only looks at how much it will cost to transform the energy sector,” said lead author Drew Shindell of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “It ignores the human cost of more than 150 million lost lives, or the fact that slashing emissions in the near term will reduce long-term climate risk and avoid the need to rely on future carbon dioxide removal. That’s a very risky strategy, like buying something on credit and assuming you’ll someday have a big enough income to pay it all back.”

The study is the first to project the number of lives that could be saved, city by city, in 154 of the world’s largest urban areas if nations agree to speed up the emissions reductions timetable and limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The greatest gains in saved lives would occur in Asia and Africa. India’s Kolkata stands to benefit most—seeing 4.4 million fewer early deaths by 2100 by cutting carbon pollution.

The researchers ran computer simulations of future emissions of carbon dioxide and associated pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter under three scenarios: accelerated emissions reductions and almost no negative emissions over the remainder of the 21st century, slightly higher emissions in the near term but enough overall reductions to limit atmospheric warming to 2 degrees Celsius by century’s end, and near-term emissions reductions consistent with a level that would limit atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The researchers then calculated the human health impacts of pollution exposure under each scenario using well-established epidemiological models based on decades of public health data on air-pollution-related deaths.

Groups Press FERC to Revisit Energy Storage Decision

In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) unanimously approved rules to remove barriers to batteries and other storage resources in U.S. power markets, a potential game-changer for integration of renewables onto the grid. Monday, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), and others filed separate requests asking FERC to reconsider this storage order. Some said that the proposal infringes on state authority.

“NARUC seeks clarification because the final rule specifies that states will not be allowed ‘to decide whether electric storage resources in their state that are located behind a retail meter or on the distribution system are permitted to participate in the [regional transmission organization/independent system operator] markets,’” the NARUC’s rehearing request said. “This statement should be deleted from the final rule.”

FERC oversees the regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) that run wholesale electricity markets. In doing so, FERC establishes market rules that “properly recognize the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources” in its February decision after finding in November 2016 that existing market rules created barriers to entry for those resources. Under the rules, grid operators can use technologies such as batteries and flywheel systems to dispatch power, to set energy prices, and to offer capacity and ancillary services.

Although FERC’s rule directs regional grid operators to set a minimum size requirement for energy storage resources to participate in their markets that doesn’t exceed 100 kilowatts, it deferred issues about aggregations of smaller distributed energy resources to a technical conference in early April. MISO asked for clarification regarding the minimum size of storage for wholesale market participation, bid parameters, and a six-month extension on the order’s deadlines.

Pruitt May Release Measures to Restrict Science Used in Regulations

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt may have plans to propose measures to limit exactly what data and studies the EPA can use in pollution rules. The idea would be to cease using scientific findings whose data and methodologies are not public or cannot be replicated.

Pruitt hinted at these intentions in a closed door meeting at the Heritage Foundation and in recent media interviews, saying “we need to make sure their [EPA] data and methodology are published as part of the record. Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Although formal plans have not been released, interviews indicate that Pruitt’s new rules would require EPA regulators to consider scientific studies that make the underlying data and methodology available to the public. The same rules would govern studies funded by the EPA. It is unclear whether the EPA would apply the directive to regulations now in place or only to new regulations. The former could affect several regulations at the EPA, including some wide-ranging air-quality regulations based on two studies from the 1990s that do not reveal their data.

Some critics, like Yogin Kothari of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, say the move could undermine environmental laws. “It’s just another way to prevent the EPA from using independent science to enforce some of our bedrock environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act,” said Kothari.

Steve Milloy, who served on Trump’s EPA transition team and attended the meeting at the Heritage Foundation, said Pruitt’s plan could come “sooner rather than later.”

A similar proposal was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in March 2017 as the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment (HONEST) Act, which would prohibit the use of “secret science” at the EPA. It’s since been referred to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

 

China Announces Long-Awaited Carbon Market Plan

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate next week in observance of the holiday. It will return on January 4, 2018.

China, the world’s top polluter, unveiled plans for an emissions trading scheme on Tuesday.

This carbon market, which would allow facilities to trade credits for the right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, would initially start with China’s power sector. It would include approximately 1,700 utilities that each emit more than 26,000 tons of carbon a year—adding up to more than 3 billion tons of carbon emissions annually. Experts indicate it will take at least a year for the program to get underway, although the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) gave no hard deadlines for launch. Over time, China is expected to gradually tighten annual allocations to force up the emissions credit price.

“Everything is gradual, step by step,” said Li Junfeng, a senior government adviser on the carbon market plan.

Nine regions and cities, including Jiangsu, Fujian and seven regions with pilot schemes, will coordinate to establish the program, the NDRC said.

Although details of the market’s expansion have not yet been released, once the market is fully operational, it is expected to cover eight sectors: power; iron and steel; non-ferrous metals, such as aluminum; chemicals; petro-chemicals; paper; building materials; and civil aviation. Designed to encompass as much as 40 percent of the nation’s total emissions, the program aims to be more than twice the size of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme.

Efforts to Replace the Clean Power Plan Underway

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Clean Power Plan Monday, asking the public to comment on what a replacement rule might look like. In October, the Trump administration proposed repealing the Obama-era rule, which sets state-by-state carbon reduction targets for power plants.

“EPA is considering proposing emission guidelines to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing electric utility generating units (EGUs) and is soliciting information on the proper respective roles of the state and federal governments in that process, as well as information on systems of emission reduction that are applicable at or to an existing EGU, information on compliance measures, and information on state planning requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA),” the notice reads.

The notice followed an announcement Friday that the EPA plans to terminate the rule in 10 months. The agency has suggested that it could have a replacement by October 2018. The news came as part of a broader Trump administration agenda to retract many environmental and other regulations.

Studies Strengthen Link between Human-Caused Climate Change and Some Extreme Weather

On the heels of an announcement by the Trump administration that climate change would be removed from the list of national security threats, new studies are pointing to further connections between global warming caused by human activities and past extreme weather events such as heat, drought, flooding and wildfire outbreaks.

A United Kingdom Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysis of 59 studies published in the last two years examined the influence of climate change on extreme weather. It suggests that warming worsened that weather in 70 percent of cases.

A separate group of studies published last week in Explaining Extreme Events in 2016 from a Climate Perspective, a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016, the hottest year in recorded history, and found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them.

Many of the BAMS studies found a strong likelihood of a human influence on extreme weather events but stopped short of saying they were outside the realm of natural variability, and not all of the studies linked 2016’s extreme events to human activity.

But it’s the first time in BAMS history that scientists have found some events that could not have occurred in the absence of global warming. According to the new reports, the three definitively human-caused extreme events in 2016 were the overall global temperature increase; record heat in Asia; and marine hot spots in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea (where a mass of warm ocean water has been dubbed “the Blob”) and off the coast of northern Australia.

“For years, scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes,” said Jeff Rosenfeld, BAMS editor in chief (subscription). “But finding multiple extreme events that weren’t even possible without human influence makes clear that we’re experiencing new weather, because we’ve made a new climate.”

 

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Decisions on Nuclear Plant Construction, FERC Directive Could Affect Grid’s Generation Sources

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Over the last decade, market upheavals and the technological advances underpinning them have placed pressure on existing electric generation units and driven deployment of non-baseload generation, creating significant uncertainty about existing business and regulatory models. This uncertainty calls into question the fate of nuclear. The Georgia Public Service Commission on Monday said it will decide December 21 whether to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle site to proceed or to call for the project to be canceled. Plagued by delays and escalating costs, the Vogtle reactors represent the only large-scale nuclear construction underway in the United States since abandonment of two reactors this summer by South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper.

Those earlier plant cancellations and the looming Vogtle decision highlight the uncertain future of the U.S. nuclear industry. As much as 90 percent of nuclear power could disappear over the next 30 years if existing units retire at 60 years of operation—the current maximum length of operating licenses. A study by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions explores how the potential loss of existing nuclear plants in the Southeast interacts with the region’s other electricity sector challenges—among them, increasing natural gas dependence, demand uncertainty, and emerging technology—and proposes steps states can take to address these challenges.

Nuclear plants, along with coal plants, would get a boost in wholesale power markets if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approves a proposal by Department of Energy Secretary Rick that would mandate that plants capable of storing 90 days of fuel supplies at their sites get increased payments for providing “resiliency” services to the grid. Proposed by Perry on September 28, the directive to FERC to change its rules was set to expire this week, but Perry has granted FERC 30 more days to make a decision on the proposal.

The extension request, made by newly sworn-in FERC chairman Kevin McIntyre, divulged that the agency’s public comment request resulted in more than 1,500 pieces of feedback from a wide array of energy stakeholders.

“[T]he Commission has sworn in two new members within the last two weeks. The proposed extension is critical to afford adequate time for the new Commissioners to consider the voluminous record and engage fully in deliberations,” McIntyre wrote in the letter to Perry.

Studies: Arctic Warming Unprecedented; Most Accurate Climate Models Predict Greatest Warming 

Two new studies point to the accelerating threat of climate change. One, an annual assessment of the Arctic released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), finds that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, a pace that holds national security and economic implications. The other, a study comparing the results of simulations from multiple climate models to satellite observations of the actual atmosphere, finds that climate models predicting the greatest warming are more accurate than those predicting less warming.

According to the Arctic Report Card, 2017 was the second-warmest year on record in the Arctic, behind 2016; sea ice maximum set a new record low; and the permafrost rapidly warmed. Most worrying to scientists, though, was the pace of change.

“The current observed rate of sea ice decline and warming temperatures are higher than at any other time in the last 1,500 years, and likely longer than that,” the report states.

The changes will affect the entire planet, but especially the Northern Hemisphere, by altering weather patterns, leading to reduced wind power and increased drought.

“The changes that are happening in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic,” said co-author Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. “These changes will impact all of our lives. They will mean living with more extreme weather events, paying higher food prices and dealing with the impacts of climate refugees.”

The NOAA report comes on the heels of a study published in the journal Nature suggesting that international policy makers and authorities are relying on projections that underestimate future warming—and, by extension, are underestimating the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to avert catastrophic climate change. According to that study, global warming projections for the end of the century could be up to 15 percent higher than previously thought.

“The basic idea is that we have a range of projections on future warming that came from these climate models, and for scientific interest and political interest, we wanted to narrow this range,” said study co-author Patrick Brown of the Carnegie Institution for Science. “We find that the models that do the best at simulating the recent past project more warming.”

According to the study, global temperatures could rise nearly 5 degrees Celsius by century’s end under the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s business-as-usual prediction for greenhouse-gas concentrations. Moreover, the analysis increases the odds that temperatures will rise more than 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, placing odds at 93 percent, up from 62 percent.

Clean Power Plan Alternative; More Hearings on Horizon

During his first congressional hearing since taking office in February, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that he is working on a replacement to the Clean Power Plan. Proposed to be repealed in October, the rule aimed to set state-by-state carbon reduction targets for power plants. No new details about the replacement rule were pressed for by the six subcommittee members, however.

If the EPA does not issue a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, it could hint that Pruitt might open up a legal battle over the 2009 carbon endangerment finding. During the hearing, Pruitt hinted that he may be skeptical of the analysis backing the finding, which found that greenhouse gases endangered public health and welfare and required the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“In fact there was something done in 2009 that in my estimation has never been done since and was never done before,” said Pruitt. “[The EPA] took work from the U.N. [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC] and transported it to the agency and adopted it as the core of the finding.”

But as ClimateWire reported, the finding was informed not only by reports from the IPCC, but also from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, U.S. Climate Change Science Program and National Research Council as well as studies and reports from other independent research groups. In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rebuffed a criticism that the EPA had “improperly delegated its judgment” to the IPCC and other organizations in the endangerment finding.

In written testimony submitted to the subcommittee, Pruitt elaborated the three goals of his Back to Basics agenda: “Refocus the Agency back to its core mission. Restore power to the states through cooperative federalism. Lead the Agency through improved processes and adhere to the rule of law.”

Following Pruitt’s subcommittee hearing, this week, the EPA announced it will now hold three more hearings on its proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan—in California, Wyoming and Missouri—after the EPA was criticized for not conducting a transparent review process and holding only one public hearing over two days in Charleston, West Virginia.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Federal Science Report Finds Human Activity Does Influence Climate Change

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

A draft report on the science of climate change estimates that it is “extremely likely” that more than half of the rise in temperatures over the past four decades has been caused by human activity. This activity, it estimates, is responsible an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.

“Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse [heat trapping] gases, are primarily responsible for the observed climate changes,” notes the Climate Science Special Report, which was available on request during a public comment period earlier this year but which received little attention until it was reported on by The New York Times this week. “There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate,” said the report.

Penned by scientists at 13 federal agencies this year, the draft report is a special science section of The National Climate Assessment, which is congressionally mandated every four years. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft report, and it now awaits permission from the Trump administration to officially release the document.

The draft report suggests that even if humans immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would warm at least an additional 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit (0.30 degrees Celsius) over this century compared with today. More greenhouse emissions will lead to higher temperatures.

The draft study follows reports by The Hill that staffers at a U.S. Department of Agriculture were told earlier this year to avoid the term “climate change” in communications and to use phrases like “weather extremes” instead.

“We won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it,” Bianca Moebius-Clune, the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s director of soil health, wrote in an e-mail to staff.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the United States experienced its second warmest year to date and 10th warmest July on record.

Court Extends Delay on Clean Power Plan; Vacates HFC Rule

In a 2–1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Tuesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to enact an Obama-era rule ending the use of hydroflurocarbons (HFCs). The 2015 EPA rule banned 38 individual HFCs or HFC blends in four industrial sectors—aerosols, air conditioning for new cars, retail food refrigeration and foam blowing—under the Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program (subscription).

A lawsuit—Mexichem Fluor, Inc. v. EPA—challenged EPA’s use of SNAP, saying that HFCs do not deplete the ozone. On Tuesday, the court found that because HFCs are not ozone-depleting substances, the EPA could not use section 612 of the Clean Air Act to ban them.

“However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA’s policy objectives, EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority. Here, EPA exceeded that authority,” Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court. “Indeed, before 2015, EPA itself maintained that Section 612 did not grant authority to require replacement of non-ozone-depleting substances such as HFCs. EPA’s novel reading of Section 612 is inconsistent with the statute as written. Section 612 does not require (or give EPA authority to require) manufacturers to replace non-ozone depleting substances such as HFCs.”

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit instituted a new 60-day abeyance of the long-running legal battle over the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which would require reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. The court order, which also directs the EPA to file status reports every 30 days, reminds the Trump administration of the 2009 endangerment finding, which means the EPA has an “affirmative statutory obligation to regulate greenhouse gases.”

In late April, the court granted an initial delay of the litigation as the White House considers how to replace it.

United States Formally Announces Intention to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement

Last week U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told U.S. diplomats to sidestep questions about conditions for the Trump administration to re-engage in the Paris Agreement, according to a diplomatic cable published yesterday by Reuters. But the communication leaves no doubt about President Trump’s intentions: “there are no plans to seek to re-negotiate or amend the text of the Paris Agreement.” Moreover, the August 4 cable instructs diplomats to let other countries know that the United States wants to help them use fossil fuels.

The cable was sent on the day that the United States formally announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement but said that it will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations during the three-year withdrawal process. The earliest date for the United States to completely withdraw from the agreement is November 4, 2020.

President Donald Trump “is open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers,” said the State Department memo, which noted the U.S. role in future climate talks.

“The United States will continue to participate in international climate change negotiations and meetings . . . to protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration,” the State Department said. “Such participation will include ongoing negotiations related to guidance for implementing the Paris Agreement.”

A United Nations statement acknowledging receipt of the notice from the United States reiterated Secretary-General António Guterres’ disappointment in the decision.

“It is crucial that the United States remains a leader on climate and sustainable development. Climate change is impacting now,” said Guterres spokesman Stéphane Dujarric.

Signatories to the Paris Agreement vowed to keep the worldwide rise in temperatures “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial times and to “pursue efforts” to hold the increase under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The U.S. pledge, under former President Barack Obama, was a cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions of as much as 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

Prior to release of the climate policy guidance cable, the Trump administration’s reiteration of plans to depart from the Paris climate deal had raised questions about what “re-engaging” in the deal meant and how U.S. participation in climate talks could play out (subscription). With regard to negotiations, the Trump administration could adopt an obstructionist role by pushing for measures to enable reduction of emissions-cut ambitions. Or it could play a constructivist role by advancing rules for transparency (the United States and China co-chair the working group writing those rules). Other areas in which the Trump administration could exert its influence include emissions reporting requirements, monitoring land-use change and developing market mechanisms.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Court Rules Industry Must Comply with Methane Regulation

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

On Monday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia order directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out an Obama-era rule that sets methane pollution limits for the oil and gas industry.

Nine of the 11 court judges issued the order upholding a July ruling that found that the Trump administration overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act when it tried to delay the methane rule.

Implemented in 2016, the rule targets new and modified sources of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas with long-term global warming potential thought to be many times that of carbon dioxide. The rule was expected to reduce 510,000 short tons of methane in 2025, the equivalent of reducing 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

After President Donald Trump asked the EPA to review the rule in a March executive order, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, in an April letter, stayed the deadline for oil and gas companies to follow the new rule by 90 days. Pruitt later sought to pause the methane rule two years to “look broadly” at regulations and review their impact.

Studies Find Earth Tilting Hard toward Warming Tipping Point

Hope that limiting climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures—the oft-cited threshold of “dangerous” warming—has been further diminished by recent studies published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

One study co-authored by Thorsten Mauritsen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and Robert Pincus of the University of Colorado at Boulder suggests that human forces have heated the climate for longer than thought—since at least 1750—pushing the so-called “preindustrial” baseline for the planet’s warming backward and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that we can emit to avoid 2 or more degrees Celsius of warming.

The Mauritsen and Pincus study analyzed past emissions of greenhouse gases and the burning of fossil fuels to show that even if that burning suddenly ceased, Earth would continue to heat up about two more degrees Celsius by 2100.

This view was similar to that of another study led by the University of Washington’s Adrian Raferty. That study calculates the statistical likelihood of various amounts of warming by the year 2100 given three trends that matter most for carbon emissions: global population, countries’ GDP (on a per capita basis), and carbon intensity (the volume of emissions for a given level of economic activity). The research puts median warming at 3.2 degrees Celsius and concludes that there’s a 5 percent chance that the world can hold warming below 2 degrees Celsius this century. The authors say there’s a 90 percent chance that temperatures will increase by 2.0 to 4.9 degrees Celsius.

Raferty’s team built a statistical model covering a range of emissions scenarios, finding that carbon intensity will be the most important factor in future warming despite the expectation that technological advances will cut that intensity by 90 percent this century.

“The big problem with scenarios is that you don’t know how likely they are, and whether they span the full range of possibilities or are just a few examples,” said Raferty. “Scientifically, this type of storytelling approach was not fully satisfying. Our analysis is compatible with previous estimates, but it finds that the most optimistic projections are unlikely to happen. We’re closer to the margin than we think.”

Construction Ends on Twin Nuclear Reactors

South Carolina utilities SCANA’s South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper on Monday opted to end construction of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station’s two reactors. The first reactor at V.C. Summer had been expected to go online in August 2019, with the second following a year later.

“The best-case scenario shows this project would be several years late and 75 percent more than originally planned,” Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter said in a statement announcing the decision. “We simply cannot ask our customers to pay for a project that has become uneconomical. And even though suspending construction is the best option for them, we are disappointed that our contractor has failed to meet its obligations and put Santee Cooper and our customers in this situation.”

The move makes the future of the United States nuclear industry even more unclear. With just one nuclear plant under construction, as much as 90 percent of nuclear power could disappear over the next 30 years if existing units retire at 60 years of operation—the current maximum length of operating licenses.

In the southeast, where the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station reactors were located, it is unlikely that existing units can simultaneously be replaced with new plants given the long lead times and limited applications for new nuclear plants at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions study explores how the potential loss of existing nuclear plants in the Southeast interacts with the regions other electricity sector challenges—among them, increasing natural gas dependence, demand uncertainty, and emerging technology—and it proposes steps states can take to address these challenges.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program Survives Legal Challenge

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Last week, California’s Cap-and-Trade Program to reduce carbon emissions was handed a victory when a state appeals court ruled that program’s auction of emissions permits does not constitute an illegal tax because the program is voluntary and the emissions permits have value. In a 2–1 vote, the Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District upheld the cornerstone piece of California’s climate change policy, siding with the program’s operator, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), by finding that the auction revenues are more akin to regulatory fees than a tax. The court ruled against the California Chamber of Commerce, a tomato processor, and the National Association of Manufacturers, all of whom alleged that CARB lacked legislative authority to create the auctions and that the emissions allowances amounted to a tax that would have required a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

California created the Cap-and-Trade Program as part of its program to meet its targets of reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The program requires factories, power plants, and other companies to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases. By putting a cap on carbon emissions and by creating a market for emissions permits, which covered entities can bank and sell if they don’t need them, the program aims to encourage pollution reduction at the least possible cost. Specifically, it allows businesses to determine whether their most cost-effective compliance option is to reduce their emissions or to pay to pollute, a flexibility that figured in the appeals court decision.

“Reducing emissions reduces air pollution, and no entity has a vested right to pollute,” the court wrote. “The purchase of allowances is a voluntary decision driven by business judgments as to whether it is more beneficial to the company to make the purchase than to reduce emissions.”

The court decision frees California to continue holding auctions through 2020 but does not eliminate all the uncertainty that has dampened demand for permits and reduced state revenues that have been used for programs linked to emissions reductions. Although the decision immediately gave carbon markets a boost, an oversupply of permits has kept them inexpensive at roughly $12.50 or $13.50 a metric ton. Experts say that price needs to reach $30 to $40 to properly incentivize new pollution control investments.

Whether emissions permits in a cap-and-trade system should be given away or sold by the government has long been debated by scholars, reports Inside Climate News. California companies had wanted permits to be handed out for free, but California chose to auction them and to use the revenue to help finance spending on energy efficiency and other parts of its climate agenda.

State lawmakers are presently debating whether to extend the Cap-and-Trade Program past 2020 to eliminate any additional uncertainty about the program.

U.S. Power Sector Shrinks Carbon Footprint in Record-Breaking Way

A continuing drop in coal use, along with relatively mild winter temperatures, drove a second consecutive year of reductions in U.S. power sector carbon dioxide emissions, according to figures released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Monday. The EIA reported that those emissions dropped 1.7 percent, compared with the previous year. That reduction was largely attributed to an 8.6 percent drop in coal-related emissions, which was offset by increases in emissions from oil (1.1 percent) and natural gas (0.9 percent). Those figures added up to a record-breaking decrease in the power sector’s carbon intensity, a measure that relates carbon emissions to economic output.

“Overall, the data indicate about a 5 percent decline in the carbon intensity of the power sector, a rate that was also realized in 2015,” the EIA said. “Since 1973, no two consecutive years have seen a decline of this magnitude, and only one other year (2009) has seen a similar decline.”

“These recent decreases are consistent with a decade-long trend, with energy-related CO2 emissions 14 percent below the 2005 level in 2016,” the EIA added.

Whether the trend will continue will depend on several factors. Climate Central reports that utilities’ increasing switch from coal to less carbon-intensive natural gas is not a panacea for climate change, because extraction processes for natural gas emit methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 100 years. Moreover, it’s unclear how the Trump administration’s push for fossil fuels development will play out. It may only delay the closure of coal-fired power plants slated for retirement if natural gas prices remain low. But carbon emissions could begin to rise again in the United States if demand for electricity and gasoline increases and if the average fuel economy of new vehicles does not increase.

The EIA reported that the only U.S. sector in which carbon emissions increased last year was transportation. Emissions directly from motor gasoline increased 1.8 percent. Notably, overall transportation sector emissions were higher than power sector emissions, a trend the EIA expects to continue until at least 2040.

Gorsuch Sworn in as Supreme Court Justice

After being confirmed Friday by a 54-to-45 vote—following Republicans’ invocation of the so-called nuclear option, which lowered the threshold on Supreme Court nominations to a simple majority vote—Colorado appeals court judge Neil M. Gorsuch took his oaths to be the Supreme Court’s 113th justice Monday. Gorsuch breaks the court’s perceived 4-4 ideological split since the February 2016 death of conservative stalwart Justice Antonin Scalia.

During his federal appeal court tenure, Gorsuch mirrored Scalia’s originalist approach to the law, interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning understood by its drafters. But he could envision his job in more “muscular” terms than his predecessor, according to The Economist. Of particular importance to climate policy is Gorsuch’s evident skepticism of the Chevron deference, whereby judges defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of federal laws when the law is ambiguous. The Chevron deference, as a principle, stems from a decision in a 1984 case that Chevron brought against the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its reading of the Clean Air Act. In last year’s Gutierrez-Brizuela v Lynch, notes The Economist, Gorsuch called into question the Chevron principle, writing that it allows agencies to “swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power” and that it “concentrate[s] federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the constitution of the framers’ design.” He suggested that it might be time to fundamentally rethink the Chevron principle.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.