EPA CO2 Ruling Comes with Regulatory Obligations

With its determination that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health, the EPA may find itself obligated to regulate mobile sources in addition to stationary ones—as well as address legal arguments that it should categorize greenhouse gases as criteria pollutants.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said focus would be on light-duty vehicle emissions and large stationary sources. But the ruling opens the door to petitions for more aggressive regulation.

The Center for Biological Diversity has asked the agency to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards for greenhouse gases that would require their strict regulation.

However, unlike other gases regulated as criteria pollutants, CO2 is dispersed around the world from its sources. This makes it difficult for any U.S. region to comply with NAAQS standards specific to CO2.

In public comments to the agency, Jason Schwartz and Inimai Chettiar, Legal Fellows at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School, warned that the ruling on the dangers of CO2 could produce a regulatory regime that was “fundamentally unworkable.”

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