Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson today announced she expects the EPA to weaken its proposed standards for global warming pollution from stationary sources and delay implementation until 2011. Responding to a letter from eight Democratic senators with strong ties to coal, oil, and industrial polluters, Jackson previewed changes to the rule to regulate greenhouse gases which her agency proposed last September she expects to make in its final form. Under the Clean Air Act, the finalization of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding originally expected in March — now, according to Jackson’s letter, in April — will trigger permitting requirements for stationary sources.

Jackson’s proposed “tailoring” rule would have limited permitting requirements to emitters of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, instead of the automatic statutory amount of 250 tons. The 25,000-ton threshold covers only 14,000 industrial pollution sources nationwide, 11,000 of which are currently covered by the Clean Air Act permitting requirements already.

However, today Jackson announced that the “decision-making process has moved far enough along that I can make several central points based on modifications I expect to make in finalizing EPA’s previous proposals,” including a 2011 start date and a “substantially higher” threshold than 25,000 tons:

– No stationary sources will be required to get a Clean Air Act permit to cover its greenhouse gas emissions in calendar year 2010.

– EPA will phase-in permit requirements and regulation of greenhouse gases for large stationary sources beginning in calendar year 2011.

– In the first half of 2011, only those facilities that must apply for Clean Air Act permits as a result of their non-greenhouse gas emissions will need to address their greenhouse gas emissions in their permit applications.

– Greenhouse gas emissions permit for other large sources will phase in starting in the latter half of 2011.

– Until 2013, the threshold for permitting will be substantially higher than the 25,000 ton limit that EPA originally proposed.

– The EPA will not subject the smallest sources to Clean Air Act permitting any sooner than 2016, after Obama has left office, even if he wins a second term.

Many of the world’s top climate scientists have warned that global emissions of greenhouse gases “almost certainly need to decline extremely rapidly after 2015” if there is to be a good chance of avoiding catastrophic warming.

The conservative Democratic senators who questioned the economic consequences of the EPA’s endangerment finding were led by Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and included Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Pat Casey (D-PA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Max Baucus (D-MT). Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-NE), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) joined numerous Republicans in supporting a bid to overturn the scientific endangerment finding entirely.

If the endangerment finding is overturned, Jackson notes in her letter, “it would undo the historic agreement among states, automakers, the federal government, and other stakeholders” for higher fuel-economy standards, “leaving the automobile industry without the explicit nationwide uniformity that it has described as important to its business.” Not to mention the health and economic costs of failing to reduce our deadly dependence on oil.

Download Jackson’s letter to conservative Democratic senators.

The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) report ignored dynamic ice-sheet disintegration, which was already happening (see Nature: “Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized”).  The IPCC therefore low-balled sea level rise estimates, suggesting seas might rise “only” a foot or two this century, greatly delighting the anti-science crowd (see “Debunking Bj¸rn Lomborg:  Misrepresenting Sea Level Rise“).

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Today’s guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow at American Progress.

Last month, an NREL study showed that America could generate 20% percent of its power just with wind by 2024.  That would require about 300,000 MW or 300 GW.  The ultimate potential is much, much higher — 30 times higher (!) — as Tom Kenworthy, CAP’s Senior Fellow based in Colorado, explains.

Thanks to improvements in wind turbines over the last decade and a half, the United States has the potential to generate more than three times as much electricity from wind as previously thought, according to a new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The assessment of onshore wind energy potential found that the U.S. could produce almost 37 million gigawatt-hours yearly. According to the American Wind Energy Association, that’s nine times our current annual electricity consumption.

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