EPA's final rule revising its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program appears to make few changes from the Trump proposal, largely retaining the draft plan's mandate for 12 states to further reduce ozone-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) while leaving steeper NOx-reduction mandates for a future rulemaking. In the final rule, released March 15 in response to an appeals court remand and district court deadline, EPA does make one change from the Trump-era proposal, to include "optimization" of selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR), a less effective emissions-control technology than the state-of-the-art controls installed on many coal-fired power plants that the Trump EPA said was not a cost-effective option. But this change in the final rule results in very modest additional NOx reductions beyond the draft rule the Trump EPA floated in October, and overall the regulation's level of stringency appears largely unchanged from the proposal.
展开▼
