In a landmark action, the Environmental Protection Agency’s final decision-making board has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated. The Environmental Appeals Board ruled today that the EPA has no valid reason for refusing to place limits on the global warming emissions from Desert Power’s proposed 110-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vernal, Utah.

Deseret Power’s Bonanza Generating Station would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. In July 2007, the EPA issued a permit for the plant, ignoring the Clean Air Act’s stipulation that all such permits must include a “best-available control technology” emissions limit for each pollutant “subject to regulation under the Act.” Before the Sierra Club brought suit, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform opened an investigation into the EPA’s decision, saying:

It is reckless to approve a huge coal-fired power plant with no global warming emission controls. This one massive plant will negate the emissions reductions being implemented by the Northeastern states in the first mandatory regional program to cut global warming pollution. The Administration’s shameful decision rewards polluters, flouts the Clean Air Act, and fails the American people.

Joanna Spalding, the Sierra Club attorney who successfully argued the case, delivered this statement:

Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy. This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America. The EAB rejected every Bush Administration excuse for failing to regulate the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. This decision gives the Obama Administration a clean slate to begin building our clean energy economy for the 21st century.

The 69-page decision described the Bush administration’s arguments as “weak,” “questionable,” “not sustainable,” and “not sufficient,” and rebuked EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for failing to issue CO2 regulations, repeatedly recommending an “action of nationwide scope.”

A legal bombshell has been dropped that may well stop all new coal plant permitting: The Sierra Club has won the Bonanza case at the EPA Environmental Appeals Board.

You can read the landmark ruling here (and full Sierra Club press release below):

… we remand the PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) Permit U.S. EPA Region 8 issued to Deseret Power Electric Cooperative for its proposed new waste-coal-fired electric generating unit at its existing Bonanza Power Plant. On remand, the Region shall reconsider whether or not to impose a CO2 BACT limit in the Permit. In doing so, the Region shall develop an adequate record for its decision, including reopening the record for public comment….

The Board notes that “this is an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting proceeding. The Board suggests that the Region consider whether interested persons, as well as the Agency [EPA], would be better served by the Agency addressing” this issue.

I’m no lawyer, and I will link to other posts and interpretations as soon as they are online. But if this stands, it would seem to require “Best Available Control Technology” for CO2 in the EPA air permits for new coal plants or additions.

Certainly it is going to slow down the permitting of any new coal plant dramatically, until the EPA figures out the answer to the $64 billion question: What is BACT for CO2 for a coal plant? That will probably take the Obama EPA at least 12 months to decide in a rule-making process. But from my perspective it could/should/must include one or more of:

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The Washington Times reports today:

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team is flirting with creating a White House “Climate Czar,” but climate change crusader Al Gore says he doesn’t want the job….

I’m not actually certain that Gore is the Czarist guy to run a National Energy Council, which “would coordinate agencies, including the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Gore is not the guy to coordinate and manage intergovernmentally, he is the guy to inspire and deliver messages and maybe pressure allies. I think he’d make a better international envoy for climate talks, although he’s apparently not even interested in that:

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The corrected NASA temperature data for October is out here. It looks to be around the sixth warmest October on record, although interestingly (though not unexpectedly, see below), the five warmest Octobers on record are all from the previous 5 years.

I don’t normally blog on the NASA monthly data, but the tiny temporary tizzy-inspiring data entry trouble NASA had a couple of days ago warrants follow up (see “The hottest October on record?“). You can read the ongoing back-and-forth in the comments section of RealClimate’s “mountains and molehills” post.

I will wait for NOAA’s monthly National Climatic Data Center update in a few days — and then the final year end data from NASA and Hadley — before drawing any significant conclusions. But assuming these numbers don’t change much, it is worth noting that now the last two months and three of the last four have had a pretty big temperature anomaly, which suggests we may be be over the cooling effects of the La Ni±a earlier this year.

I would add that we would expect the greatest warming trend in the Arctic because the loss of sea ice exposes the open ocean directly to the air. Unfortunately, there are exceedingly few temperature stations over the Arctic. So while anomalously warm Octobers are going to be the norm, the current data sets probably underestimate northern hemisphere autumnal warming. But don’t tell that any deniers or delayers, unless you want to put them into a tiny temporary tizzy. That is NASA’s job!

Executive Summary: Don’t waste your time on the Heritage Foundation’s energy blog, a source of misleading headlines and general conservative disinformation, but little original analysis and even less (unintentional) humor.

Bloggers and print editors look for headlines that fulfill two competing goals:

1. It needs to grab readers’ attention and make them want to read more.
2. It needs to deliver the main message:
   • Half or more readers never get beyond the headline, so you’d like them to at least get the key information just by skimming your headlines. If you have sub heads, like newspapers and many blogs but unlike Climate Progress, this is much easier. That’s why my headlines are occasionally quite long.
   • If the headline doesn’t actually match the story content, readers eventually won’t even bother believing the headlines anymore.
   • If the headline doesn’t summarize the story, then readers have to guess what the story is about, and that wears thin quickly. That was a problem with NRDC’s Switchboard blog for a while, but they fixed it.

That is my long introduction into Heritage’s Energy and Environment blog, which is unusual in that the front page is nothing but screaming headlines, nothing but this sort of thing (except in a much bigger font):

• The Left’s Big Deficit, Less Energy Plan for Millions of Low Paying Entry-Level Jobs
• Is There No End to Cap and Trade’s Failure?
• Oh My God, They Admitted It

You get the picture. The first story is their response to the multiple debunkings of their lame attack on the Center for American Progress’s Green Recovery analysis. Except, of course, that they don’t respond to a single point in my debunking (see “The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism: Heritage even opposes energy efficiency“). As for the Heritage headline, it is conservatives like President Bush following policies recommended by Heritage that eliminated Clinton’s huge surplus and gave us a Big Deficit. Obviously, the goal of any rational energy plan is to help people to use Less Energy through energy-efficiency. And the green recovery jobs cover the spectrum from Joe-the-Plumber/electrician/contractor type jobs installing solar hot water systems or insulation to high-tech manufacturing jobs for wind, solar, and efficient appliances. So I’m scoring this Heritage headline 0, Reality, 3.

The second story is about Europe’s cap and trade system. The price of carbon permits dropped suddenly because of the global economic recession. Duh! If industrial activity drops sharply, then Europe’s total carbon emissions drop all by themselves, so the demand for permits to emit carbon dioxide must drop, and hence their price. Heritage is not only shocked by standard high school economics, they absurdly use this natural market reaction to call the system a “failure.” I’m scoring this Heritage headline 0, Reality, 2. [Note: This particular anti-cap meme has some legs in the MSM, so I'll blog on it in later in more detail.]

It’s the third headline that really grabbed my attention. I thought, wow, this must be huge news. Who are “they,” and what have they admitted? Scientists admit global warming is a hoax after all? American Idol judges admit the whole thing is fixed? Not quite that big:

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I think rip-offsets are well, a rip-off, especially as a major cost-containing measure for climate regulations (see here). But I haven’t seen many leading legislators diss them.

So I confess to being quite surprised that the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said at a conference Wednesday:

“I think this whole issue of offsets, the more I’ve read about this issue, both international and domestic offsets, are fraught with opportunity for game playing, which will be fully exploited, I’m sure. We have a lot of creative people who can find ways to find offsets and to verify offsets if we open that door to occur.”

E&ENews PM (subs. req’d) has the story:

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