Last week (Tuesday, October 18th, to be exact) marked the fourth year since then-Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment Rod Bremby issued the historic denial of air quality permits for the proposed 1400 MW Holcomb Station coal-fired expansion sought by Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (of Kansas), Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association (based in Colorado), and Golden Spread Electric Cooperative (of Texas).

That Was Then

Bremby cited the (then) recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and the United Nations IPCC reports on global climate change and its impacts upon human health and the environment among his reasons for the denial.  His decision also cited Kansas statutory authority clearly delegated to the KDHE Secretary for such decisions.  His decision was the first instance in the United States of a public official blocking coal plant construction based in part upon concern for health and environmental impacts from climate change caused by coal-fired power plant emissions.

Pro-coal forces in Kansas and elsewhere immediately launched an assault on then-Governor Sebelius, with paid advertisements in national media linking the decision to support for foreign dictators and hyperbolic claims that Bremby acted “illegally” and “against the will of Kansans.”  The ads were blasted by observers everywhere as false information and fear-mongering, and subsequent multiple, bi-partisan polls in Kansas showed clear and overwhelming public opposition to the proposed coal plant project with its emphasis upon unneeded electricity generation, imported resources, pollution of Kansas, and value and economic impact for other states.

The Sebelius administration spent significant political capital defeating multiple versions of pro-coal and anti-regulatory wish-list legislation in 2008 and 2009.   As late as April of 2009, then-Lt. Governor Parkinson repeatedly and publicly called out the lies and misinformation project supporters were using to justify their efforts.

In the wake of the 2008 national elections, the pro-pollution and climate change denial machine (generously funded and guided by Kansas’ own Koch brothers) increased efforts to undermine established scientific consensus regarding climate change and human-caused drivers of global warming.  Using climate change denial and the economic recession as a kind of Trojan horse, the pro-pollution, anti-health crowd has undertaken a concerted effort to not simply stop regulation or valuation of greenhouse gases, but to undo 40 years of federal public health and environmental protections – protections that have coincided with unprecedented overall economic growth and prosperity in the United States.

Sunflower Electric and its allies dodged continuous questions about the project (from financial mismanagement, to “clean coal” falsehoods, to demand realities, to water consumption) and threw everything and the kitchen sink at the decision and support for it, including personally naming Bremby, Sebelius, and Parkinson in a frivolous federal lawsuit.   Yet, the project remained stalled for legal, regulatory, financial, and other reasons.  Golden Spread moved on, and developed wind and natural gas assets to meet its relatively small need for future generation capacity.

Public and administrative support for Bremby’s decision stood firm until Sebelius departed for a Presidential cabinet appointment.  Immediately upon being sworn in as governor, Parkinson announced his own secret deal with Sunflower Electric that gave pro-pollution advocates everything they had ever wanted (and that he had previously called “dishonest” and “unnecessary”), including a 900 MW coal plant at the Holcomb Station and a complete stripping of state responsibility for air quality.  Of note, Bremby never signed the settlement agreement and KDHE was never involved in the development of the deal.  Parkinson then embarked upon a process of collusion and political pressure that saw the project permitted before the end of 2010 despite unprecedented public opposition – ultimately firing Bremby in order to clear that path.

This Is Now

In mid-2011, former KDHE Secretary Bremby accepted an offer by the governor of Connecticut to apply his considerable talents and commitment to public service on behalf of that state’s citizens.

Former Governor Parkinson is now a highly paid lobbyist in Washington, DC, and former Sunflower Electric Power Corporation CEO Earl Watkins has retired.

The Bloomberg Foundation (of New York City’s Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg) recently donated $50 million to Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

And a Republican sweep of statewide elected offices and Congressional seats leaves Kansas with the most conservative (and pro-polluter) public leadership in the state’s modern history.

Meanwhile, the pesky reality that, due to massive unpaid taxpayer loans, Sunflower Electric is essentially a federal government entitlement project did not escape the attention of a federal District Judge, who ruled that Sunflower Electric and the Rural Utilities Service of USDA had violated federal law in pushing the Holcomb Station coal-fired expansion forward at taxpayer risk and without legally-required review. Remediation in that case is pending, as is a Kansas Supreme Court review of a legal challenge to the KDHE permit and process for the project.

According to the permit granted by KDHE, the proposed plant is not state of the art or clean, as claimed, but will in fact be one of the dirtiest plants in the nation.

Electricity demand is down and, even accounting for the recession, projections are for much lower demand than utilities had been claiming.

None of the primary project partners can demonstrate a need for coal-fired generation from the project – it appears to be essentially a merchant plant designed to benefit Tri-State since it will be phased for the Western Grid and will be owned entirely by Tri-State.

The much-touted jobs and economic benefit from the project are years away at best, since there is no need for the plant’s capacity and Tri-State has publicly stated construction will not begin prior to 2016, at the earliest.  Still, Kansas elected officials continue to help Tri-State delay the project while blaming “environmental extremists” for the delays.

The fundamental science that informs the worldwide observations of global warming caused by anthropogenic climate change continue to be confirmed, including by a recent study funded in part by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation.

Kansas’ relative ranking in achievable wind energy capacity has increased.  Recent tall tower data for Kansas from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows even more wind density than previously measured, with wind generation capacity factors in southwestern Kansas reaching over 50% in some instances.  Wind farm and transmission development in Kansas continue apace, regardless of the proposed Holcomb Expansion coal-fired project.

Lower prices and increased supply have made natural gas cost-competitive with long-term coal contracts, and its cleaner emissions portfolio beats coal’s performance (and cost) under increasing public health and environmental protections.  Natural gas is also a much better partner for renewable energy integration than coal.

In spite of deceptive and misleading partisan political tactics, modern and necessary public health and environmental protections (most developed under previous Republican administrations, many focused on power plant emissions) continue to be implemented and supported by a significant bi-partisan majority of Americans.

The regulatory uncertainty caused by partisan political opposition to carbon regulation or valuation, in the context of virtual certainty by key actors in capital finance markets and energy policy circles that greenhouse gases must and will be regulated in the future, has created significant overhanging risk, halting most investment in new coal plants and making the economics of coal plant retrofits questionable.

Efforts continue to obscure the facts, derail the rule of law, and deny the public interest in order to benefit the coal plant project and its special interest allies.  All in all, though, it seems that Mr. Bremby’s decision four years ago remains as visionary and important an act of public service now as it was in October of 2007.

Scott Allegrucci is the Executive Director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

From The Lawrence Journal World

This is not how government is supposed to work.

An email trail examined by a Kansas City newspaper reveals a disturbingly cozy relationship between the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Sunflower Electric Power Corp., which was seeking a KDHE permit to build a coal-fired power plant in southwest Kansas. After several years of contentious dealings during which a permit for the plant was denied several times, it appears that, during the closing days of Gov. Mark Parkinson’s term, elements of the permit process were virtually turned over to Sunflower officials.

Key among those was KDHE’s decision to simply forward public comments about the power plant to Sunflower officials who then supplied responses. In many cases, those answers, or something very much like them were simply passed along in a way that made them appear to be unbiased responses that were researched and supplied by KDHE.

According to the news report, KDHE received almost 6,000 comments from various experts and members of the public concerning the power plant project. Although it had taken KDHE staff about 10 months to review and respond to almost 800 public comments it received in 2007, the department was able to deal with the 6,000 comments in about seven weeks.

It was no secret that this project was on the fast track after Parkinson bartered a deal in May 2009 that would allow one coal-fired plant to be built. Sunflower submitted a new permit application in January 2010. The permit still was under review when KDHE Secretary Rod Bremby was dismissed from his post on Nov. 2, 2010. The next month, acting KDHE Secretary John Mitchell approved the permit.

During that seven weeks, the emails, obtained through a public records request, show that KDHE officials boiled the 6,000 comments down to about 275 questions, which it sent to Sunflower to obtain written responses. The emails also show instances where KDHE staff members asked Sunflower officials whether the department should even respond to some comments. The relationship was so tight that a Sunflower employee was sent to Topeka to help set up a computer program to organize the public comments for KDHE and Sunflower.

What the emails reveal is a relationship that is highly inappropriate for a state agency and a company it has the duty to regulate. It wouldn’t be unusual for KDHE to seek input or technical information from Sunflower, but to allow the utility to pick the questions it will address and then supply the answers was, in Bremby’s words, “a total abdication of responsibility.”

The conduct of KDHE in this matter transcends any judgment on the merits of the Sunflower application. Whether or not they believe the southwest power plant should be built, Kansans should be extremely concerned by the process by which that permit was approved. KDHE’s charge was to make an independent, unbiased appraisal of the power plant project and the various issues raised in public comments about the permit.

The trail of email officials left behind indicates they failed miserably in that task.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Rod Bremby confirmed last week what most people assumed: He didn’t voluntarily leave his position of secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Bremby said that former Gov. Mark Parkinson’s office contacted him Nov. 2 and told him that he no longer would be KDHE secretary. “There was no rationale given,” Bremby said, though most everyone assumes it was to help ensure that KDHE approved an air-quality permit for Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to build a coal-fired power plant near Holcomb. Bremby was told that he could receive a severance package if he agreed not to discuss the issues until after Parkinson left office in January. Meanwhile, a study released last week challenges Sunflower’s contention that its new power plant would be the cleanest of its kind in the country. The report found that at least 669 coal-fired generating units have lower emissions of particulate matter than the current Sunflower permit allows and at least 321 coal-fired generating units have lower emissions of mercury than the Sunflower permit allows.

Read more: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2011/02/hands-are-dirty-in-coal-plant-deal/#ixzz1E8Arfiqu

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Former Kansas Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby spoke at Kansas City Kansas Community College about his controversial decision a few years ago to deny a permit to a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Kansas.

On a day when the wind chill started out as below zero, global warming would hardly seem the appropriate topic. But as former Kansas Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby told students and the public at a speech on sustainability today at Kansas City Kansas Community College, the extremes of weather, including hot, cold and major weather events, have connections to human actions that have polluted the environment.

While it’s colder in some places, overall the Earth is warming, he said, citing scientific findings. The extreme cold weather the nation is experiencing, along with weather events in Europe and the recent extreme floods in Australia, could all be part of the effects of global warming, he said.

Bremby defended his actions today in denying a permit three years ago to Sunflower Electric Power Corp. for a controversial coal-fired power plant in southwestern Kansas. One by one, he answered critics’ claims against his actions in denying the permit. His decision was supported by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.  After his exit, a permit for a coal-fired plant was later approved in 2010 by Bremby’s replacement appointed by former Gov. Mark Parkinson. Bremby said he did not want to divulge today what he said to then-Gov. Parkinson, or his advice, when he was forced out as health and environmental secretary last November.

During his presentation, Bremby showed slides from a study that challenged whether the coal-fired plant in Kansas would be the cleanest in the nation, a claim that was stated by its supporters. He said that there were more than 600 other plants in the nation that were cleaner.

Bremby told the audience that it would be far more efficient, and would create more Kansas jobs, to retrofit existing homes, businesses and institutional buildings to become energy-efficient rather than to build new coal-fired plants.

In answer to a question from community activist Richard Mabion, Bremby agreed that Kansas City, Kansas, could become part of the model for green cities by renovating more of its homes in the northeast area, rather than tearing them down. Russ Rudy also raised the question of how to save more homes in the northeast area from bulldozers.

Bremby explained that his denial of the permit for the coal-fired plant a few years ago was the first step toward a public process to create a conversation about the state’s energy policy. However, he felt that the work toward creating an energy policy based on participation from the public has not been accomplished yet in the state. He said he favored participation from all segments in creating that policy.

A few years ago, the influence of lobbying dollars in this permitting process was “staggering,” Bremby said.

He urged those in attendance to not only follow the politics of the environmental issues in Topeka and Washington, but also to take action at home, where they live and work, in accomplishing environmental goals.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Three months ago, Roderick Bremby was abruptly fired by then-Gov. Mark Parkinson.

He is still wondering why.

Bremby doesn’t know for sure that it was because he had blocked a proposed coal plant, although many suspect that was the reason.

“I definitely feel I did the right thing,” Bremby told The Kansas City Star on Wednesday in his first interview since being fired.

Bremby was appointed secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in 2003.

His work there was fairly smooth until Sunflower Electric Power Corp. filed an application to build coal plants in western Kansas. In 2006, after much work, research and discussion, Bremby made his decision.

His announcement was a landmark in environmental history. He became the first public official to deny a permit to build a coal plant based on concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to health and the environment.

But the fight was just beginning.

In 2009, Sebelius was appointed to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, who had opposed the coal plant, took her job.

“When he was lieutenant governor, we had a solid working relationship,” Bremby said. “Mark took a very active role in supporting alternative energy.”

But on May 1, 2009, a Friday, Bremby said he met with Parkinson, who said there was some interest in finding some middle ground regarding the coal plant issue.

What Parkinson didn’t say was that he was in the middle of meetings with Sunflower executives, and on Monday, the stunning compromise was announced. It would allow Sunflower to build one coal plant.

“The pace and speed of the development surprised me,” Bremby said.

Parkinson could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

In 2010, as Parkinson’s term as governor was nearing an end, Sunflower officials were telling Topeka insiders that they were concerned Bremby was deliberately slowing down the permit. Sunflower wanted the permit finished by Jan. 2 to beat new federal regulations on greenhouse gases.

On Nov. 2, Election Day, Bremby got a call from Parkinson’s chief of staff and his legal counsel. They advised him that the governor wanted him to take a Cabinet transition director position.

Bremby suggested he could do both jobs, but they told him no, he would no longer be KDHE secretary. He was told that he could receive a severance package if he agreed not to discuss the issues until after Parkinson left office in January.

“There was no rationale given,” Bremby said. “There was no conversation about the permit or any of that. I have not had a chance to visit with Mark, so I’ll just wonder a while and leave it where it is.”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Kansas City Star reporter Steve Everly explains the reason prices rose, and we look at another type of gas: natural gas.  The U.S. is full of natural gas, and some energy companies are rethinking their domestic energy production strategies, moving away from coal and moving more towards electricity generation by natural gas, wind, and solar.

Kansas City Star reporter Karen Dillon also updates listeners on the Sunflower Electric coal-fired power plant, and the KDHE permit process involving former Secretary Rod Bremby and outgoing governor Mark Parkinson.

Listen here.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

It’s nearly the end of the year, policy watchers — do you know where your Kansas secretary of Health and Environment is?

If you look for Secretary Rod Bremby, “the man who put a red state on the green map” and who has been quoted in this column over the past year and a half, you won’t find him in the state directory. As of last month, he’s out.

Bremby is the latest casualty of the coal wars, which over the past four years in Kansas has centered on Sunflower Energy’s bid to build two more coal-burning power plants in Holcomb.

With a new administration at the doorstep in Topeka, let’s look at the (d)evolution of the Sunflower controversy.

When Sunflower applied for an air quality permit in 2007, Bremby denied it on the basis of the potential plant’s carbon dioxide emissions, which the U.S. Supreme Court had recently declared as pollutants (along with other greenhouse gases, or GHGs) under the Clean Air Act. Bremby’s department was the first government agency to deny a permit based on GHGs, and environmental groups across the nation hailed the decision. The pro-Sunflower camp was livid.

Legislators wrote and passed four bills that would block the secretary’s decision. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed all of them.

In April 2009, Sebelius resigned to join President Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson was elevated to governor. Before the name on his door was dry, Parkinson struck a deal with Sunflower Energy and its supporters in the Statehouse to build one coal plant in exchange for legislators enacting a new energy package that included renewable energy standards.

The new energy compromise bill, passed in May 2009, eliminated Bremby’s ability to reject a permit based on GHG concerns: a gift to Sunflower that got that pesky, health-obsessed secretary out of the way. In return, alternative-energy enthusiast Parkinson won new standards requiring major Kansas utilities to generate 20 percent of their power from wind and other renewable sources by 2020.

Fast forward to September 2010. Leaked e-mails show that a Sunflower vice president told his allies that Bremby was “gaming the process” in order to slow down the permit review and suggested that they communicate with Bremby and the governor to try to “positively change” the situation.

A few weeks later in early November, Parkinson offered Bremby a different job, requesting that he swap his position for that of helping manage Gov.-elect Sam Brownback’s transition. Bremby turned down the offer — and he was out. Many believe Bremby was fired in order to expedite a Sunflower permit before a looming deadline that would raise the cost of building the new plant.

Sunflower had until Dec. 31 to gain a permit under existing standards before the revised Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules kicked in on Jan. 2, 2011. If it got a permit after Jan. 2, Sunflower would be required to tool the plant with the cleanest technology available.

A flurry of activity, including nine state agency staffers who are not eligible for overtime working late nights and weekends, enabled the permit review to be completed last week. Opponents of the coal plant claim that Sunflower and its supporters pressured the agency to work fast, but acting Secretary of Health and Environment John Mitchell denied any such outside manipulation.

On Dec. 16, Mitchell granted Sunflower the permit to construct the 895-megawatt coal plant, which will sell the majority of its electricity to Colorado.

Ironically, the announcement came one day after Colorado declared that it was shutting down several coal plants and would have no coal-burning power plants in the Denver area after 2017.

That’s where Kansas stands in the coal wars. Coal-burning plants are on their way out in Colorado, California, Arizona, Oregon and elsewhere, but here in Kansas we’re staying old school, at least in part. The 7 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions produced by the new plant will contradict the state’s clean energy incentives, but no one said we Kansans aren’t complicated.

Will Gov. Brownback’s energy deals be just as irrational? I doubt Mr. Bremby will stick around to find out.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

My colleague said it well yesterday in his response to Tuesday’s election results - we will not cede our future to polluters, who again poured tens of millions of dollars into various campaigns.

No surprise here, the coal industry is part of those polluters throwing money around to support candidates who will keep the loopholes and handouts in place and help them block any action on global warming.According to an election spending report from the Center for American Progress:

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has spent more than $16.3 million in 2010, including $3,005,540 on a national ad and buys in Washington, D.C., Montana, and Texas over the last three months. The group has budgeted $20 million for online campaigns. This Big Coal front group is infamous for its forged letters to members of Congress opposing clean energy and climate legislation that resulted in a congressional investigation.

But the shady politics don’t stop there. If you ever wanted evidence that the coal industry is corrupting our politics, look no further than the state of Kansas and the decision Tuesday by Governor Mark Parkinson to fire his chief environmental official Rod Bremby.

In 2007, under then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Bremby had the courage to reject the massive proposed Sunflower coal plant because of its impacts on global warming. Global warming, Bremby argued, threatened the health and welfare of all Kansans.

After the state legislature enacted new legislation that attempted to eliminate Bremby’s authority to reject the permit and Sebelius was called to Washington to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Governor Parkinson struck a deal with Sunflower Corporation to fast-track the coal plant permit.

However, Bremby remained firm that he was not rushing the permitting and he had an obligation to ensure a fair and open public process and fulfill his legal duties to review the permit’s legality before it could be issued.

But on Tuesday, with everyone consumed with election coverage, Governor Parkinson fired Bremby. This was a crass political move to ensure the permit is issued before the Governor leaves office in January 2011.

And another example of coal’s corruption comes from Indiana, where Duke Energy is under investigation because “(a) top attorney in the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission took a job with Duke, which he appears to have negotiated at the same time he was overseeing decisions about Duke’s new power plant.”

The Duke plant is already under construction (and $1.3 billion over-budget) and will continue construction during this ethics investigation.

Meanwhile in Kentucky, coal isn’t just proving itself unethical again, it’s proving itself dangerous. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced yesterday it is asking a federal judge to shut down a Massey Energy coal mine in protect workers there. This the first time the MSHA has ever used this power.

In filing for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court, the government cites persistently dangerous conditions in Massey Energy’s Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County….The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times this year alone.

Coal is dirty and dangerous, and our politics and our health are at risk as long as the coal industry maintains its lock on our energy sector.

That is why our work is so very important. We are not giving up and we are not done.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Tuesday’s election results will force the White House and its environmental allies to trim their ambitions for sweeping climate legislation and seek more modest bipartisan measures to cut oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions.

The GOP victory reshuffles key House leadership posts and effectively ends the two-year effort to secure broad climate legislation. GOP gubernatorial gains threaten to slow or reverse the implementation of climate initiatives that have been enacted in more than half the states nationwide.

Recognizing the altered landscape, President Obama said Wednesday: “I think there are a lot of Republicans that ran against the energy bill that passed in the House last year, and so it’s doubtful that you could get the votes to pass that through the House this year or next year or the year after.”

Obama said he thought it might be possible to reach bipartisan agreement on broadening nuclear power use, natural gas exploitation and sales of electric cars. He said the cap-and-trade approach to limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases “was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means, not an end.”

Obama also hinted that the accord the administration forged with the auto industry, unions and investors that raised fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks could be a model for a deal with electric utilities over carbon dioxide emissions at power plants. That type of agreement could be implemented without legislation by Congress. Administration sources said recently that they were already exploring such a deal.

Many lawmakers have raised the prospect of blocking unilateral regulatory action by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon dioxide emissions, a power the Supreme Court said EPA has under the Clean Air Act.

“I would hope one of the things we’ll see is Congress will assert primacy in this area of policymaking,” said John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Obama struck a conciliatory note on the matter. “The EPA wants help from the legislature on this,” he said. “I don’t think that, you know, the desire is to somehow be protective of their powers here. I think what they want to do is make sure that the issue’s being dealt with.”

At the state level, regulatory efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions could lose steam.

Roderick Bremby, the top environment official in Kansas, resigned Tuesday as Sen. Sam Brownback (R) cruised to victory in the gubernatorial race. Three years ago, Bremby was the nation’s first official to reject an air permit application for a power plant because of carbon dioxide emissions. The outgoing governor, Mark Parkinson – a former Republican who took over in 2009 when Kathleen Sebelius joined the Obama Cabinet – gave Bremby a choice of leaving immediately or overseeing the transition to the conservative Brownback. Bremby left.

With Brownback’s victory, Bremby’s departure was a certainty anyway. His early departure will probably help Sunflower Electric, which has reapplied to build two coal plants in the western part of the state; it hopes to obtain permits before new state regulations take effect in January. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune called the move “outrageous. It’s dirty coal politics.”

Environmental leaders did their best to highlight a few electoral victories, such as the defeat of Proposition 23, which would have suspended California’s landmark law curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and the fact that GOP Senate candidates Sharon Angle (Nev.), Ken Buck (Colo.) and Christine O’Donnell (Del.) did not win.

But they acknowledged that the loss of the House Democratic majority, along with dozens of key lawmakers who favored their agenda, would pose a challenge in the next Congress.

House Republicans will probably eliminate the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, which Democrats created four years ago. The incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), plans to scrutinize the scientific data underlying the administration’s climate policies.

“It’s not about whether climate change is happening or not happening,” said Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella. “It’s about the implementation of public policy based on facts and figures, and making sure it’s accurate.”

In addition to stricter congressional oversight, the new Congress will usher in a record number of lawmakers who question the link between human activity and global warming. Five of the six new GOP senators and 35 of the 85 House Republican freshmen fall into that category, according to Daily Kos blogger R.L. Miller andThinkProgress, an arm of the liberal Center for American Progress.

“We can play less defense,” said one oil industry lobbyist. “We can get more creative.” He said that new priorities would be to block new regulations requiring greater use of ethanol, lower nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, and higher efficiency boilers. The EPA’s proposed rules that prepare the way for the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions — known as tailoring and endangerment — are also targets. Efforts to limit EPA’s power by legislation could “percolate next year and be ripe for an appropriations fight this time next year,” he predicted.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.