EPA won’t promise final power plant carbon rules before 2012 elections

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon float delayed draft rules to curb greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, but the agency’s top air-quality official isn’t making any promises that the standards will be finalized before the 2012 elections.

“I at this point won’t anticipate when that is going to be completed,” Gina McCarthy, who heads the Office of Air and Radiation, said at a briefing Thursday hosted by ICF International.

Mitt Romney and other GOP White House candidates oppose regulating greenhouse gases, and congressional Republicans are trying — unsuccessfully thus far — to thwart EPA’s power to impose emissions standards.

McCarthy said the rules, which would apply to new and modified power plants, are on track to be proposed in draft form soon. “Our timeline has been for the end of January. We think we are close to that timeline,” she said.

The rules, under a 2010 settlement with environmental groups and others, were initially slated to be proposed last summer and completed next May, but the schedule has repeatedly slipped.

McCarthy said the rules will be beneficial for the public and the power sector, which is by far the largest stationary source of carbon emissions that are contributing to global warming.

“We are trying to do this to benefit the industry for certainty as well address the issues associated with climate change,” McCarthy said.

“We think regulating greenhouse gases from power plants is a reasonable and appropriate thing to do and one that could help in terms of providing certainty to investments moving forward,” she said.