In response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) updated Unified Agenda, Evergreen Action Executive Director Lena Moffitt released the following statement:
“EPA’s latest agenda places strong prioritization on finalizing its carbon standards—a tool that is the Biden administration’s greatest asset to ramping down pollution from our power sector. Until now, the fossil fuel industry has had unfettered rein to spew mass pollution—making the power sector the second largest contributor of climate warming pollution. But last month, EPA took a huge step forward in the effort to clean up our power sector by acting under its Clean Air Act mandate. And this week, EPA has shown further commitment to ‘walking the talk’ by moving up the finalization date for its carbon standards by two months—to April of 2024. EPA is clear about the mission ahead, and we are happy to see them driving this important work forward.
“Additionally, the administration must move swiftly to finalize other key, pollution-reducing standards. For instance, it is concerning to see an additional delay on critical standards like the soot, coal ash, and startup, shutdown, and malfunction rules—and a full-year delay in the national ozone standard. We simply cannot afford any further delays.
“EPA’s dedicated public servants are doing critical, life-saving work, and we look forward to seeing them blow past the finish line and finalize each of these crucial rules during the first term.”
Evergreen previously released an EPA Power Sector Report Card, highlighting EPA’s progress on 10 key power sector and air quality rules that are critical to reining in pollution that harms frontline communities and is exacerbating the climate crisis. Additionally, earlier this year, Evergreen released “Powering Toward 100 Percent Clean Power by 2035,” a report with modeling that details how President Biden can build on the clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and close the remaining pollution gap to get on track to achieve his climate commitments.
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