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On October 12, 2012, the EPA responded to petitions for rehearing en banc filed by Industry Petitioners in the Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA case before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  The petitions seek review by all eight D.C. Circuit judges of the three-judge panel decision issued last July that upheld EPA’s greenhouse gas (“GHG”) endangerment finding, its first-time ever regulations of GHG emissions from automobiles, and its “Tailoring Rule” and “Timing Rule” under which EPA commenced GHG permitting requirements as of January 2, 2011 and set numerical permitting thresholds.

On July 27, 2012, the Department of the Interior (“DOI”) Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) and the Department of Energy (“DOE”) announced the availability of the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (“PEIS”) for solar energy development in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah in the Federal Register.

On July 2, 2012, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (“PHMSA”) proposed a record $3.7 million penalty in its Notice of Probable Violation and Proposed Civil Penalty (“NOP”) against Enbridge Energy, Limited Partnership (“Enbridge”).  The NOP stems from an oil spill on one of Enbridge’s pipelines in Marshall, Michigan. 

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. 

At the end of last week, the District Court for the District of Columbia ordered EPA to release a new national ambient air quality standard for particulate matter (“PM”) by this Thursday, June 7th.  The decision appears to reflect frustration by the court at EPA’s reluctance to meet deadlines for the release of new rules required by the Clean Air Act.  With less than a week to go, and the proposed standards still under review by the White House, EPA will have to move faster than ever to comply with the order or develop yet another creative means of buying itself more time.

On May 17, 2012, FERC issued a policy statement to explain how it will advise the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) on requests for Administrative Orders (“AOs”) to allow generators to operate in noncompliance with the EPA’s recent Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (“MATS”) rule for electric generators.   The Policy Statement is generally consistent with the FERC Staff white paper on the same topic issued in January.

On May 9, 2012, the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power held a hearing on H.R. 4273: “Resolving Environmental and Grid Reliability Conflicts Act of 2012” and the “Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2012.”  H.R. 4273 purports to resolve the conflict for an electric generator who may be asked by DOE to run for the sake of electric reliability, even though it may be unable to comply with the recent suite of EPA power plant regulations.

On May 4, 2012, in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) stated that it planned to take final action on National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”) for particulate matter by August 15, 2013.