By Kristie Beaudoin, Yanyou Chen and Allison Donnelly

Along with our faculty advisors Tim Profeta, Billy Pizer, and Brian Murray, we make up the U.S. Climate Policy Options project, part of Bass Connections in Energy. Yanyou is a graduate student in economics, Kristie is a law student with a focus on environmental law, and Allison is a senior undergraduate student earning her B.S. in Environmental Sciences with a certificate in Energy and the Environment. Through this blog, we hope to introduce you to our project – why we’re doing it, how we’re doing it, and what we learn along the way.

Today’s post focuses on what our project is, and why we’re doing it.

In 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases (GHGs)­—gases like carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere responsible for climate change—are air pollutants subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. According to the Clean Air Act, if the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds that a pollutant might reasonably “endanger public health or welfare,” he is required to regulate it. In 2009, the EPA issued what is now called the “Endangerment Finding,” finding that greenhouse gases do endanger public health and will therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Since then, several pieces of legislation have been introduced in Congress seeking to reduce GHG emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2). The most well known of these was the Waxman-Markey bill, which would have introduced an emissions trading plan into the U.S. economy (known as “cap-and-trade”). Waxman-Markey and other attempts to legislate were defeated, and comprehensive climate change legislation seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Because Congress has chosen not to approve legislation that would meaningfully reduce GHG emissions, any emissions reductions must now come from existing regulations. The decision not to legislate has created a very complex process. Our goal in this project is to dig into this process to see how it’s going to unfold in light of a lack of climate change legislation.

Currently, the EPA is working to develop regulations for emissions within the power sector. Regulating the power sector is important because it is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country and is the first step to reducing emissions. Our project is monitoring proposed regulations in the power sector, but thinking further into the future: once the power sector is regulated, how do we deal with the industries that are next in line in terms of emissions, specifically oil refining and steel manufacturing? We’re looking into how the EPA may choose to regulate these sectors (specifically under Clean Air Act section 111(d), which we’ll detail in a future post) in a way that allows them to absorb the costs and continue functioning.

In the first couple weeks, we’ve been drafting some serious “to-do” lists in terms of what our research project should ultimately accomplish, and what steps we need to take in order to achieve our goals. Yanyou has been collecting enormous amounts of data about the aggregate level of emissions in steel and petroleum refineries, and has plans to collect even more as the project progresses. Allison has been teaching us what she’s been learning about the oil and steel refining industries, and will eventually reach out to players in each industry to get their perspectives on what regulation might look like and how it will affect them. Kristie has been studying the Clean Air Act, current proposals for the power sector, and existing regulations for other pollutants in the steel and oil refining industries in an effort to determine what legal requirements attach to any regulations of GHGs in oil and steel. Each of us has a large amount of research ahead of us, and we look forward to using our unique backgrounds and skill sets to throughout the semester to ultimately come up with policy options that may inform the way regulations are eventually implemented.