Business Groups Challenge Greenhouse Gas Regulation

Joseph P. Koncelik has a great blog entry about a challenge by several large business organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, to the application of all of EPA's GHG regulations other than the automobile tailpipe rules limiting GHG emissions from vehicles. This is not a direct attack on the Tailoring Rule, but a broader effort to stay the effect of all other GHG rules. As he explains it,

Business groups had no alternative but to seek a stay given the ramifications of EPA embarking on this regulatory path. Typically, you would ask to stay the effectiveness of a specific rule. However, delaying the legal effectiveness of the Tailoring Rule would arguably subject all businesses to the ridiculously low permitting thresholds 100/250 tons in the Clean Air Act.

As result, business group are challenge the very premise the EPA had to enact the Tailoring Rule because otherwise the 100/250 ton thresholds would take effect after enactment of the vehicle tailpipe rule.

This type of lawsuit, and similar challenges to EPA's Endangerment Finding (that CO2 presents a danger) and Tailoring Rule (explaining how EPA will regulate GHGs), as well as environmentalists' challenge to EPA's decision to ignore the 100/250 ton threshold for regulation of GHGs that would otherwise be required by the Clean Air Act, are all pending before courts. Some of them will likely rule one way or the other on stay requests before the end of the year, before the Tailoring Rule goes into effect.