President Barack Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, senior officials said Wednesday.
Obama will also seek expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment.
Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change, said the president would announce the new policy initiatives in the coming weeks. Another official said a presidential address outlining the new policy could come as early as next week.
"He is serious about making it a second-term priority," Zichal said at a forum in Washington sponsored by the magazine The New Republic. "He knows this is a legacy issue."
Zichal suggested in her remarks that a central part of the administration's approach to dealing with climate change would be to use the authority given to the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate-altering pollutants from power plants under the Clean Air Act.
She said that none of the initiatives being considered by the administration required legislative action or new financing from Congress, but any effort to clamp down on power plant emissions is likely to provoke intense opposition in Congress and litigation by industry.
Such regulations would hurt states heavily dependent on cheap power from coal and would drive up electricity prices, at least in the short term.
In a speech in Berlin on Wednesday, Obama said the United States and the world had a moral imperative to take "bold action" to slow the warming of the planet.
"The grim alternative affects all nations – more severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise," Obama said. "This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time. And for the sake of future generations, our generation must move toward a global compact to confront a changing climate before it is too late. That is our job. That is our task. We have to get to work."
The electric power sector is responsible for about a third of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, and any serious effort to address climate change will require steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants from coal-burning power plants.
"The EPA has been working very hard on rules that focus specifically on greenhouse gases from the coal sector," Zichal said. "They're doing a lot of important work in that space."
The issue of power plant regulation is sensitive, because it will most likely make electricity more expensive in many parts of the country. It would put further stress on the coal industry, which is already suffering from a lack of demand as utilities switch to natural gas, which is cheaper.
Regulation of existing power plants is further complicated by the pending nomination of Gina McCarthy to become the administrator of the EPA.
McCarthy, who worked as a top environmental regulator under Democratic and Republican governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts, has for the past four years run the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, which is responsible for enforcing the Clean Air Act.