On Monday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a declaration that outlines its authority and rational to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). The EPA press release read, “greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.”

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson

Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Copenhagen making remarks to the UN Climate Change Conference, where she echoed many of the statements in the press release. “This long-overdue finding cements 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began seriously addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” Jackson said.

This important news, though within the climate change realm, has been overshadowed by international issues surrounding the conference. So what business does the EPA have being in Copenhagen?

The EPA’s new authority, released as a set of findings, are in response to a 2007 US Supreme Court decision that GHGs fall under the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants, effectively allowing the EPA to impose regulations limiting the emission of GHGs from sources inside the US.

While CO2 (the major GHG) in and of itself is not harmful to humans, the increasing concentration of it and the five other major GHGs is changing the global climate. Climate change will lead to health impacts such as stronger heat waves and more respiratory illnesses due to increases in ground level ozone.

One of the first ways that the EPA will use this authority is to mandate higher fuel efficiency standards for light-duty vehicles, with rules to be announced in March. These standards are expected to reduce CO2 emissions from this sector by 21% by 2030.

The EPA is also launching a program in January to require the 10,000 largest sources of GHG emissions in the country, which account for 85% of the total emissions from the US , to begin reporting their emissions to the EPA.

So two questions. First, if the EPA has the authority to regulate emissions, then why do we need action from the US Congress? Second, why is the EPA Administrator at the international climate change negotiations? I’ll answer the second question first.

U.S. lead negotiator Todd Stern

It’s no coincidence that this finding was released the same day that the COP-15 climate change negotiations began in Denmark. As the US negotiators have come to the table without domestic climate change legislation being passed, this announcement from the EPA is second best. It will give US negotiators something concrete to back up their positions, and will give other countries some assurance that the US is not just all talk (or all hat and no cattle).

Back to the first question – so why do we even need domestic legislation if the EPA could just regulate the vast majority of sources of GHG pollution? First of all, this sort of command regulation would not be very popular politically. Industry, Congress, and the American people would probably like to have some say in how the US economy is decarbonized. Second, without comprehensive climate change legislation mandating a long term solution, efforts to reduce GHGs will be done at the whim of whatever administration controls the executive branch (and the EPA). Industries that are making long term and costly investments in new technologies and methods do not want policy of this magnitude to change every four to eight years.

This fact – that there needs to be both legislation from congress and regulatory authority from the EPA – is acknowledged by Lisa Jackson, “The reason is because legislation is comprehensive; it can be economy-wide,” she said. “It can give business absolute certainty that we are on the road to clean energy, that the investments they want to make … will be profitable ones, because they know that this country is on the road.”

While there are many hurdles to overcome during this conference, hopefully this bit of news will provide some momentum to the US, and give confidence to the rest of the world that the US is serious about climate change.