Tasked with leading the EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment, Administrator Gina McCarthy believes energy issues and environmental issues are simply “two sides of the same coin … especially when it comes to challenges of air quality, and the challenges and the opportunities we face related to climate change and reductions of carbon pollution.”
“If you look at the historic approach we took to fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, we all know fuel efficiency is actually energy efficiency,” Administrator McCarthy stated at the recent IHS Energy CERAWeek conference in Houston.
According to McCarthy, new standards implemented in the first term of the Obama Administration can be expected to double the distance vehicles will travel on a gallon of gasoline.
“That’s a huge win for the environment because it essentially will slash 6 billion metric tons of carbon pollution by 2025,” she said, which is the equivalent to the entire amount of carbon pollution emitted across the United States in 2010.
“It wasn’t just a win for the planet; it was a win for everybody’s pocketbooks,” she added. “American families will save $8,000 at the pump over the life of their cars.”
This standard helped fuel a resurgent American auto industry, McCarthy continued.
“In 2011, we exported almost 33-percent more cars than we did in 2009; that’s a clear sign of a healthy industry,” she said. “Since Chrysler and General Motors emerged from bankruptcy, the auto industry has added nearly 250,000 jobs. That’s the best period of job growth in more than a decade.”
The increase in automotive exports indicates manufacturers need not choose between a healthy environment and a healthy economy.
“When you look at all of our challenges, from the perspective of working together to identify a path forward that will serve our interests environmentally, and on the energy side as well as economics, we can make these wins happen over and over again,” she said.
Climate change and carbon emissions
Achieving this “win/win/win mentality” is the EPA’s driving force in addressing climate change, McCarthy explained.
“President Obama’s Climate Action Plan … will not only cut pollution of carbon emissions, it will also focus on building resiliency in the face of what we already know is a changing climate,” she said.
The Climate Action Plan also intends to establish the United States as a visible leader in international discussions, she said, leading to generating “a global solution to a global challenge.”
The shift to clean energy is a “huge part” of this overall message, McCarthy stressed.
“That’s why the president directed the EPA to develop common sense carbon pollution standards for the largest sources of carbon emissions in the United States,” she said. “He not only directed the EPA to make sure we use a common sense approach to get significant greenhouse gas reductions, he made sure he directed us to do it in a way that does not threaten energy reliability, that would not significantly increase the cost of energy. And he told us to do it in a way that would support job growth in our growing economy.”
Recognizing finding this critical balance is “a very difficult task,” McCarthy said the balance is within reach as a result of the EPA’s two-pronged approach.
“Before we even proposed a rule to take a look at carbon emission standards for existing facilities, we did ‘in-reach’ in the government,” she explained. “This is an administration-wide effort to work together to understand how we marry the missions of environment, energy and economy, working together to develop a rule that makes sense.”
The second prong of that approach, McCarthy identified, was an unprecedented outreach to the utility industry, U.S. energy regulators across the United States and to individual states, who will be co-regulators in implementing proposed EPA guidelines.
Coal, natural gas and ‘all of the above’
McCarthy made it clear conventional fuels like coal and natural gas will continue to play a critical role in the United States’ energy sources “for years to come,” and proposed regulations would not change that reality.
“Our rules understand a generation of facilities are responding to regulations the agency has initiated, that are doing the best they can and that are underpinning our ability to deliver reliable and cost-effective energy,” she said. “This rule is going to understand how it fits with that energy mix, moving forward.”
Referring to the implementation of alternative energy sources, McCarthy cited a recent trip to North Dakota.
“I was touring some of the wind farms there, as well as a carbon-capture in technology that is acting as a gasification facility there. There are technologies that, if we continue to invest in them, will allow fossil fuel to be part of the mix for generations to come,” she said, adding the EPA is encouraging investments in those technologies.
“We’re also understanding, as we’re looking at the transition to a clean energy mix, that it’s essential for the United States to keep investing in these types of technologies if we plan to keep our competitive edge sharp on the global stage.”
The United States must recognize every innovative option available — an “all of the above” energy strategy, she stressed.
“It is our policy in the United States, a policy that is working for America, because we’re producing more oil than ever before,” she said. “For the first time in two decades, we’re producing more than we export.”
The United States has reduced its level of carbon pollution in the past eight years beyond “any other nation on earth,” a result of the Obama Administration’s Clean Energy policy, which has doubled the use of renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, according to McCarthy.
Specifically, Texas is the leader in installed wind capacity in the United States.
“So if you don’t think renewables are part of a clean energy future, you’re incorrect. You’re incorrect in the United States, and you’re incorrect everywhere else,” McCarthy emphasized. “It is indeed going to be an ‘all of the above’ approach, both here and eventually across the world.”
Clean energy = opportunity = jobs
Regarding the challenges of a clean energy future “in a carbon-constrained world,” McCarthy also recognizes “tremendous opportunity” for job growth.
“When it comes to energy — clean energy development and deployment — America really is ‘open for business,’” she said.
As an example, McCarthy cited the Interior Department’s permitting no less than 50 renewable energy projects on public land since President Obama took office.
“Those 50 projects account for 20,000 jobs and generate enough electricity to power 4.8 million homes. These are not small projects, and this is not a small amount of success,” she emphasized.
The Department of Energy’s Appliance Efficiency standards “underpin success” in the industry sector, she said, in manufacturing of appliances “people want to sell.”
“We’re not just talking about toasters and TV, folks,” she said. “We’re talking about commercial appliances. Sixty percent of commercial buildings are covered by those standards.”
McCarthy said the federal government recognizes it must expand on the success already achieved by lower-level government, including more than 35 states that have adopted energy-renewable targets and 25 states that have set energy efficiency goals. Additionally, as many as 1,200 U.S. mayors — both Republicans and Democrats — have signed agreements to cut carbon pollution.
“They are taking action not only to bring more efficiency to their operations — to bring more efficiency to the people who live in those communities — but they’re also working together to identify ways to ensure their communities are safe and healthy,” she said.
State governors from both parties are also developing a bipartisan, multistate commitment to purchase thousands of natural gas vehicles.
“They recognize the abundance of natural gas, and they are looking for innovative ways to bring that opportunity to 22 states,” McCarthy said. “States are incubators of innovation, and they have been for years. At EPA, I have no intention of establishing a federal rule that doesn’t rely on the things states and cities are already doing so they have the flexibility to shine, in any rule that moves forward.”
McCarthy concluded her remarks by asking for continued support and input from the energy sector.
“Please, let’s work together,” she requested of the conference’s delegates. “Let’s confront our energy, our climate challenge and seize it as an economic opportunity to drive a healthy, sustainable and more prosperous future for all of us.
“It’s about making sure the planet we now inhabit is livable for us, and for generations to come. That is the challenge of this generation.”
For more information, visit www.ceraweek.com/2014.
