EPA Defends Obama-Era CSAPR 'Update' From Competing Legal Attacks

摘要

The Trump administration in a new legal brief is defending an Obama-era rule "updating" the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule emissions trading program, rejecting some states' claims that the rule is unnecessarily stringent and other states' and environmentalists' arguments that the update should have imposed stricter air pollution limits. The 2016 rule tightened states' emissions caps for ozone-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) under the CSAPR emissions trading system in order to reduce ozone levels further to help states meet the 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS), set at 75 parts per billion (ppb). The 2008 standard is tougher than the prior limit expressed as 84 ppb that the original 2011 CSAPR was designed to meet, along with particulate matter limits.