Even with a GOP Congress, here’s how a lame-duck Obama can help the environment

If you want to see any action in Washington over the next two years on energy and the environment, keep your eye on President Barack Obama.

“On the energy and environment front, I'm not expecting much from Congress, but I expect the president to move forward in an aggressive manner with his existing authorities,” says Joe Aldy, a former White House aide and now a professor of public policy at Harvard.

“I think we're going to see the President come forward this year with a truly major, transformative regulation for the American power sector," Aldy predicts. "It's going to set the foundation for the US to begin a meaningfully downward trajectory in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions."

A big move might set a critical example with global climate talks taking place later this year in Paris, Aldy says. "I think it's something that will be very important for the president to use when he engages countries around the world, to make sure that they move forward and undertake serious actions in their own countries to address greenhouse gas emissions."

Aldy says President Obama still has the opportunity to shape several major areas of environmental and energy policy in his final two years in office. Here are some of the major ones:

The Keystone XL pipeline

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives has already passed a bill approving Keystone XL, though there is still debate over whether the Congress has the authority to do so. President Obama has promised to veto the bill.

Aldy says the struggle over Keystone has grown completely out of proportion to the impact it will have on either the environment or on jobs. Many energy experts believe the pipeline will have a very modest impact on jobs, he points out. As for the environmental argument, he believes what the US and Canada do to address climate change overall will be more important than whether or not we build one pipeline.

Changes in the North American energy system in the last four or five years — since the debate over Keystone began — may also affect President Obama’s final decision. The US has become a much bigger domestic oil producer, and we’re consuming less of it because of new fuel economy standards. And with oil prices now 50 percent lower than last summer, some question whether the tar sands are even a good economic investment.

Carbon dioxide emissions

In late 2014, the president put forward an EPA proposal to address carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's power plants. Power plants are the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, so Aldy says this is an opportunity to significantly reduce them, especially by switching from dirty fuels like coal to either renewables like wind and solar or natural gas.

As expected, the proposed rule is getting a lot of attention: The EPA has received more than a million comments on the regulation. The agency is scheduled to publish a final regulation this summer. Once it is finalized, it will prompt the states to start to design plans on how to implement it, though some states will resist and others will assert the rule does not go far enough to protect public health.

Either way, one thing is certain: “The probability is 100 percent that there will be lawsuits,” Aldy says.

Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"

This is the last big category of emissions the Obama administration can tackle through its existing authorities under the Clean Air Act, Aldy says. The administration has already begun to solicit input from the public and industry about how to address the "fugitive methane emissions" associated with fracking.

Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide: "Pound for pound, the comparative impact of methane on climate change is over 20 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period," according to the EPA.  

Action on the problems associated with fracking, like wastewater disposal and groundwater contamination, is a different story. There Aldy thinks the Obama administration may defer to the states on most issues. “The impacts vary from state to state in a way that's distinct from the impact of air emissions, where it's really sort of common regardless of where the drilling activity occurs,” Aldy explains.

Transportation

The current transportation bill expires this year, so there has to be some kind of legislative action on transportation. The question is whether Congress and the administration can agree on a financing mechanism for road construction and mass transit that will have a positive environmental benefit and also address the problem of congestion.

“There’s a possibility that if the two parties can be creative in how we address transportation, we can have a longer-term transportation bill that addresses the financing needs for highway construction, but also delivers some environmental benefits," Aldy says.

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood