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West Virginia, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Future of Climate Policy

In June 2022, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that on “major questions” the U.S. Congress must legislate with far more clarity and specificity than previously demanded. The Court held the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may regulate power plant carbon emissions in traditional ways, but the novel approach taken in the Clean Power Plan required clearer authorization than Congress had provided. Six weeks later, Congress enacted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

88 FR 41262

FERC directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to develop a new or modified reliability standard to address reliability concerns pertaining to transmission system planning for extreme heat and cold weather events that impact the reliable operation of the bulk-power system.

88 FR 41035

EPA updated the list of chemicals subject to toxic chemical release reporting under EPCRA and the Pollution Prevention Act, identifying nine per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that must be reported.

88 FR 40816

EPA announced the start of the 2024 submission period for the TSCA Chemical Data Reporting rule.

88 FR 39845

EPA seeks comment on implementation of a plan to ensure that farmworkers have access to bilingual pesticide labeling by December 2025 under the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022.

88 FR 39652

EPA proposed to address the unreasonable risk of injury to human health presented by perchloroethylene (PCE) under its conditions of use as documented in the Agency's December 2020 risk evaluation for PCE and December 2022 revised risk determination for PCE prepared under TSCA.

88 FR 38280

EPA amended the requirements in the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan that govern the use of dispersants and other chemicals and spill mitigating substances when responding to oil discharges into jurisdictional waters of the United States.

88 FR 36349

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy notified the Earth Observations community that a draft of the congressionally-mandated National Plan for Civil Earth Observations will be released for a short national review period in Summer 2023.

Climate Compliance Versus Action 2023

The Inflation Reduction Act and Federal Buy Clean Initiative have each inspired states and municipalities to regulate embodied carbon (Scope 3) using “Buy Clean” policies and legislation. Reducing embodied carbon has become mainstream, and environmental product declarations (EPDs) have surfaced as the tool. Are EPDs alone enough? Is the compliance timeline sufficient? On February 1, 2023, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts that provided an update on Buy Clean policy, green funding, the status of carbon emissions, and a primer on EPDs.

88 FR 35841

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office expanded the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program to include innovations in any economic sector that are designed to make progress toward achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, increased the filing limitations for petitions under the program, and extended the duration of the program.