#clean-air-act

#clean-air-act

The text of the Clean Air Act and robust congressional debates at the time of its enactment bely EPA's central justification for repealing the endangerment finding and the greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles-that the Clean Air Act of 1970 was concerned only with local and regional pollutants. It wasn't. But EPA's repeal contains even more flaws. In particular, the agency relies on three key Supreme Court climate change cases to support its action but mischaracterizes each of them.

Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency made a surprise announcement: President Donald Trump would consider giving some polluters exemptions from a handful of Clean Air Act rules. To get the ball rolling, all it would take was an email from a company making its case. The EPA set up a special inbox to receive these applications, and it gave companies about three weeks at the end of March to submit their requests for presidential exemption.

The Supreme Court is expected to get a chance to take a second look at a landmark 2007 decision that paved the way for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other sources. But this time, legal scholars say, a shift in the makeup of the court may lead to a much different outcome, one that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's battle against climate change.

"I am horrified but not surprised. The flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act and the disregard for our human right to clean air, by xAI's burning of illegal methane turbines, has been stamped as permissible by the Shelby County Health Department."

For instance, if all the 35 turbines operated by xAI were using add-on air pollution control technology to achieve a NOx emission rate of 2 ppm-as xAI's consultant agreed it would-they would emit about 177 tons of NOx per year, as opposed to the 1,200 to 2,100 tons per year they currently emit, the letter said.