Tomorrow, as many of you know, there will be a vote on what's called a Resolution of Disapproval that seeks to nullify the endangerment finding made last year by the EPA that carbon dioxide is a threat to human health and welfare. Senator Murkowski, a well known friend of the oil industry, is of course sponsoring the bill.
The bill will is highly unlikely to pass the Senate with 51. The fact that Jay Rockefeller is voting for it is evidence enough: Reid has very likely released him to vote his district. The main reason why it won't pass, though, is because of the deal on CAFE standards worked out between the automakers and the administration, which included a planned 250 gram per mile limit on CO2 (which, sadly, has been a grossly underreported victory of the Obama administration).
EPA regulations will, therefore, come into force sometime next year. Therefore, I think it's important that we make some important distinctions between these regulations and, say, a carbon cap. In short: these regulations are not a substitute for a real cap.
The reason for this comes from the Clean Air Act. Under the New Source Review program, which is a permitting process under the clean air act, sources that are, well, new, are subject to regulation. There are likely to be court challenges to this rule, which I don't want to get into right now, but the rule will apply only to newly built sources emittion above 100,000 tons of CO2 per year (aka all new fossil-fueled power plants, functionally speaking).
That is to say, old, dirty, coal-fired power plants are NOT SUBJECT TO REGULATION. These old power plants will come under regulation if they are "modified" in any way that increases their emissions by 75,000 tons per year. Given that every power plant in America gets the shit monitored out of it at all times, the EPA's gonna know if your emissions go up. Count on it.
But that being said, power plant operators are used to this. They will, therefore, go to enormous lengths not to exceed their previous emission levels or even reduce their output. This is positive, no doubt, but it doesn't make the utilities or oil refiners think twice about closing old dirty power plants.
A cap, on the other hand, that says that in 40 years, we'll cut our CO2 by 80+%, is a very very strong signal that the jig is up for coal-fired power plants.
These regulations, therefore, upon enforcement, are no substitute for a carbon cap. We may not have many new dirty plants, but we need a real cap and huge, huge investment in clean energy to decarbonize our world and have a real shot at doing something to encourage the US to be a clean energy leader.