Texas Association of Business

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency’s formal declaration Monday that greenhouse gases jeopardize the public paves the way for federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from refineries, chemical facilities and power plants, even if Congress rejects climate change legislation.

The EPA’s finding also will give President Barack Obama political ammunition when he goes before world leaders in Copenhagen next week to promise cuts in U.S. emissions as part of international climate change negotiations that kicked off Monday.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the finding will add weight to Obama’s appearance in Copenhagen “because it shows that America is taking this issue very seriously and is moving forward.”

But Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a skeptic of global warming, said the regulations would cause a “bureaucratic nightmare” and “lead to a wave of new regulations and bureaucracy that will wreak havoc on the American economy.”

Business groups also blasted the decision.

A “top-down, command-and-control regime ... will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Although the EPA’s declaration doesn’t directly impose new carbon dioxide caps, it establishes a framework for regulating carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Monday’s action satisfies a legal hurdle for the EPA to complete the first-ever national limits on tailpipe emissions, which were proposed this year.

Industry and EPA lawyers say the vehicle emissions rule and the endangerment finding would compel the agency to regulate, under the Clean Air Act, the heat-trapping gases released from industrial operations, possibly next spring.

Shell Oil Co., which has backed congressional climate change legislation, said the EPA’s approach “could have negative consequences for businesses, jobs and our economy.

It will lead to project delays, years of litigation and regulatory uncertainty while businesses and agencies are waiting for the courts to rule.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute on Monday said it would challenge the finding in court. And legal challenges to future greenhouse gas regulations are widely viewed as inevitable from both environmentalists and affected industries.

Some lawmakers and business leaders have preferred congressional action to the EPA’s involvement. They contend that legislation can be better tailored to soften the financial blow on certain industries and regions.

Even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged Monday that Congress is better positioned to combine economic safeguards with an economywide carbon cap.

“Legislation is the best way to move our economy forward on clean energy and to address climate pollution,” Jackson said. “The reason is because legislation is comprehensive, it can be economywide ... and it can give business absolute certainty that we are on the road to clean energy; that the investments that they want to make ... will be profitable.”

Jackson said the EPA’s path was driven by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualified as pollutants and could be regulated.

The decision could prod sluggish efforts in the Senate to pass a climate change bill that faces widespread opposition from Republicans on economic grounds and resistance from Democrats worried about home-state interests.

Democratic leaders have said the earliest a global warming measure could be debated is next spring.

The cornerstone of the leading congressional proposals has been a so-called “cap-and-trade” plan that would let businesses buy and sell valuable emissions permits to comply with steadily tightening carbon dioxide caps.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sponsor of the lead global warming bill in the Senate, called the administration’s action “a clear signal to Congress.”

“If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration is more than justified to use the EPA to impose new regulation,” Kerry said. But, he added, those regulations “will not include the job protections and investment incentives” that likely would be in a legislative proposal.

“The message to Congress is crystal clear: Get moving,” Kerry said.

Critics of the EPA’s finding called it an overreach by the federal government that would damage the already ailing U.S. economy.

“Carbon dioxide is necessary for human life, and regulating it as if it was a pollutant would be a job killer,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, said the finding “allows the executive branch to threaten the entire country and our economy, essentially saying to Congress: Pass a cap-and-trade climate bill or else.”

The issue is big in Texas, which emitted 677 million tons of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants in 2007, according to Public Citizen, an environmental and consumer advocacy group.

Eleven new plants are in the permitting pipeline, with the potential to add nearly 80 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.