EPA

When the front door won’t open, try the back. Try the side door and all the windows, too.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week settled a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity with an agreement aimed at addressing the causes of ocean acidification in coastal states and potentially regulating those causes under the provisions of the Clean Water Act. With the EPA’s intent to regulate large stationary greenhouse gas sources under the Clean Air Act already considered a back door to climate regulation and under fire from some lawmakers, this new avenue represents yet another way into the problem.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson faced questions today from senators about her agency’s fiscal year 2011 budget request. Although representing only a small portion of the $10 billion total request, the ongoing battles regarding the EPA’s aim to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from some sources took center stage.

The agency seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas regulation — House members seeking to overturn its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, senators calling for delays on regulation, states and industry groups attempting to sue. These maneuvers are drawing national attention and dividing Democrats in Congress. However, the chances of permanently preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases appear slim.

One of Congress’s staunchest opponents of climate action launched another attack on climate science this week, this time going directly after the scientists themselves.

It’s an old political tactic with a dark history that is surfacing again as state legislators and federal lawmakers weigh regulations that are opposed by some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the country.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) on Tuesday used his position as the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to issue a “minority report” that pulls a handful of comments out of thousands of pages of private emails among scientists that were hacked into last year just before the international climate change conference in Copenhagen.

The report goes farther than Inhofe's usual arguments, though. In it, his staff writes:

“In our view, the CRU documents and emails reveal, among other things, unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some of the world’s preeminent climate scientists.”

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testifies before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about her agency's budget this morning, and she’s given the committee plenty to talk about.

In a letter on Monday responding to questions from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and seven other coal-state Democrats, Jackson spelled out her plans for the endangerment finding — the EPA determination in December that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare. That finding laid the foundation for future greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act and stirred up fierce opposition from major emitters.

In the letter, Jackson set a timeline for phasing in greenhouse gas regulations starting in 2011 with only the largest emitters, and she suggested that federal officials will be looking for fast development of carbon capture and storage technologies, or CCS.

Farm state lawmakers and agribusiness have been hammering the EPA since it announced a plan last year for evaluating biofuels by their lifecycle emissions — including indirect land use changes.

It appeared then that corn-based ethanol wouldn’t make the cut. The proposed rules, based on the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, required renewable fuels’ lifecycle emissions to be at least 20 percent less than gasoline's. An early EPA review calculated that, with greenhouse gases from indirect land-use changes included, most corn ethanol wasn't much better than regular gas.

The EPA has now finalized the renewable fuel standard, and agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today that corn ethanol will qualify after all.

“EPA has found that it is indeed 20 percent less greenhouse gas emitting than gasoline,” Jackson said. “Based on what we know now, including indirect land use analysis, there is no basis to exclude these fuels.”

What changed in less than a year?

U.S. President Barack Obama proposed a federal budget today that would begin to tip the scales away from fossil fuels and toward greater government investment in clean energy.

It would eliminate several fossil fuel subsidies, a move expected to generate about $36 billion for the federal government over the next 10 years, and increase clean energy research and development spending by about $6 billion.

To sweeten the deal for Republicans and fossil fuel-state Democrats, the president piled on loan guarantees for nuclear power and reiterated his support for a nuclear revival, more off-shore drilling, and “clean coal” technology, which was heavily funded through the recovery act last year. In addition, the new budget offers only a passing reference to a future cap-and-trade program, describing it as carbon neutral rather than assuming it would generate revenue.

Whether Congress can carry through on the president's recommendations remains to be seen, however.

The Department of Energy’s move to strip some LG refrigerators of the Energy Star label set the blogosphere afire with stories about how the EPA was toughening up Energy Star restrictions. It turns out that’s only sort of true.

After a flood of wet coal ash swept from a power plant containment pond in December 2008, contaminating a river and covering 300 acres of eastern Tennessee, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would decide whether to issue new coal ash regulations by the end of 2009.

As that deadline approached last month, however, the agency admitted its findings would be delayed "due to the complexity of the analysis."

If it were simply a question of how best to protect the public, the decision would have been made weeks ago, health and environmental advocates say. But it appears cost has become as significant a factor as protection.

After a year of hope, 2010 is starting out with proponents of action on climate change facing an uphill battle.

In 2009, a new president moved into the White House, Congress inched toward passing a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the Copenhagen climate summit waited as a hopeful coda to a year of climate action. It ended up being a year of mixed results, however, and the prospects for climate action this year appear equally mixed.

Congress gets back into full swing next week, and several senators have made assurances that climate change will be one of the first issues they discuss.

For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that means a new attempt to block greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA.

Sunflower Electric Corp. today submitted a revised permit application to build a new coal plant in Holcomb, Kan., reviving a long-running effort to break ground on a locally polluting facility that would send most of its electricity to customers out of state.

The saga first drew national attention in 2007, when the head of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment rejected Sunflower's air permit request, making history as the first state official to base the rejection in part on the potential dangers greenhouse gas emissions pose to human health and the environment.