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Late in the day on Friday, November 16, 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) issued a proposal to reconsider maximum achievable control technology standards for hazardous air pollutant emissions from new electric generating units (referred to as “UMACT”). EPA’s previously-issued standards for new units, promulgated as a part of EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule, had been criticized by a coalition of new unit developers as unattainable. One of the new unit developers asked EPA to reconsider the standards, as did the trade association of pollution control equipment vendors, which also told EPA that its members could not issue guarantees that the standards could be met.

On October 5, 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia requesting en banc rehearing of its ruling on the EPA’s Cross State Air Pollution Rule (“CSAPR”).  The court, in a three judge panel, vacated CSAPR in a 2-1 decision on August 21, 2012 (“August 21 Order”).

In an October 12, 2012, filing with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, EPA told the Court it needs a year or more to finalize its pending regulations for coal combustion residuals (“coal ash”).  EPA’s filing resisted a lawsuit filed by environmental parties seeking to impose a six-month deadline for finalization of the coal ash regulations.

On July 10, 2012, the National Transportation Safety Board (“NTSB”) approved a staff report that faults both Enbridge Energy, Limited Partnership (“Enbridge”) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (“PHMSA”) for a 2010 pipeline rupture that spilled almost 850,000 gallons of crude oil in Marshall, Michigan. 

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory recently performed a modeling study aimed to quantify the total effect that increases in wind energy will have on pollutant emissions from an electric power system.  Although wind energy generation does not itself generate harmful emissions, wind is thought to have the potential to create a negative effect on emissions from the rest of the power grid as thermal power producers are required to adjust their output level in response to wind’s variability and unpredictability.

On May 30, 2012, EPA finalized its proposal to allow states to use compliance with the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (“CSAPR”) as an alternative to the Best Available Retrofit Technology (“BART”) requirements for individual sources under the Clean Air Act regional haze program.  To help implement this decision, EPA also replaced several state regional haze plans that relied on the predecessor to CSAPR, the Clean Air Interstate Rule (“CAIR”), with federal plans that rely on CSAPR in lieu of BART.