Acting EPA head wants states to set own rules

Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler offered additional insight Tuesday into the federal agency’s recently proposed energy rules, emphasizing the importance of allowing states to set their own efficiency plans.

Speaking in Columbus alongside newly elected U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson, a Zanesville Republican representing Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, Wheeler said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will issue efficiency guidelines to states for each type of power plant, which the states will use to “set the specific efficiency requirements on a plant-to-plant basis.”

States will have up to three years to tell the EPA how they plan to implement the standards, Wheeler said.

“If the states haven’t gone far enough, the EPA Wheeler can always step in and go further,” he said.

The EPA’s proposed plan, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, is meant to take the place of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, which sought to reduce the nation’s carbon-dioxide emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The plan never went into effect after numerous legal challenges.

“This will provide more flexibility to the states,” Wheeler said. “The Obama plan was more social engineering. What we’re doing is returning to the core basics of the Clean Air Act, which is working cooperatively with the states.”

Wheeler said the EPA’s plan does not pick energy winners or losers.

“The Obama plan certainly picked coal to be a loser,” said Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist.

Critics of the EPA’s plan say it doesn’t do enough to reduce emissions in an attempt to fight climate change.

However, Wheeler said he doesn’t believe the plan is a step backward.

“I don’t think it’s a step backward because the Obama regulation got held up in the courts and was never enacted,” Wheeler said, adding that he believes the new plan will withstand any possible legal action.

Balderson, speaking at what he called his first official event as a congressman, said the EPA’s plan would benefit Ohio, saying it will lower the cost of energy for businesses and consumers.

Balderson said he couldn’t specifically say whether the new plan would keep open any coal-fired power plants that were expected to shut down as a result of the Obama administration’s plan. But he said that will be part of a new conversation that each state will be allowed to have.

“Let the state of Ohio make that plan and they can decide which plants seem to be running at an efficient level,” Balderson said.