Regulating New Fossil-Fuel Appliances Under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act

Authors

Jack Lienke
Rachel Rothschild, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow
Henry Engelstein
Nardos Girma

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

The majority of residential and commercial buildings use appliances powered with fossil fuels for space and/or water heating. Collectively, these appliances—most of which run on natural gas—emit substantial quantities of a variety of harmful air pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides (“NOx”), and carbon dioxide. Fossil-fuel appliances in the U.S. emitted over 425,000 tons of NOx in 2017—almost three times the amount attributable to gas-fired power plants in that year. And fossil-fuel combustion in residential and commercial buildings accounted for almost 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019—only slightly less than gas power plants. Yet while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has limited gas power plants’ NOx emissions since the 1970s and their greenhouse gas emissions since 2015, the agency has never regulated emissions from residential appliances and restricts emissions from only a tiny fraction of heating systems in commercial buildings.

This report explores EPA’s authority to regulate residential and commercial fossil-fuel appliances under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act. Section 111(b) requires EPA to establish nationwide standards of performance for new stationary sources in categories that, in the EPA Administrator’s judgment, “cause[ ], or contribute[ ] significantly to, air pollution, which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” These performance standards, which are typically expressed as a maximum rate of permissible pollution or minimum rate of pollution reduction, must “reflect[] the degree of emission limitation achievable through the application of the best system of emission reduction which . . . the Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated.”

Comments

Copyright © 2021 by the Institute for Policy Integrity. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission. Work published when author not on Michigan Law faculty and included by author request.

Recommended Citation

Lienke, Jack, Rachel Rothschild, Henry Engelstein, and Nardos Girma. "Regulating New Fossil-Fuel Appliances Under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act." Institute for Policy Integrity (2021).