EPA chief finally hits back at carbon rule critics

Lisa Jackson, head of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), yesterday launched a robust defence of the watchdog's right to regulate carbon emissions, warning that far from protecting jobs, efforts to reverse the agency's regulatory powers would damage the economy.

The EPA faces several legislative actions and court cases over its controversial ruling that greenhouse gases represent a threat to public health and can be regulated under the existing Clean Air Act.

It has subsequently been accused of everything from killing jobs to basing its decision on flawed climate change science and is facing many legal actions designed to strip the agency of its right to regulate emissions.

Most notably, Republican senator Lisa Murkowski is poised to launch a disapproval motion in the Senate, which if successful would block the agency from regulating emissions, while Democrat senator John Rockefeller has outlined proposals that would force the EPA to postpone measures to regulate emissions from power stations and industrial sites for two years.

Jackson told a meeting of the National Press Club yesterday that the attacks on the EPA's efforts to regulate emissions would undermine the emerging US clean tech industry, warning that regulatory uncertainty meant that firms had "little incentive" to invest in low-carbon technologies.

"Supposedly, these efforts have been put forward to protect jobs," Lisa Jackson told a meeting at the National Press Club. "In reality, they will have serious negative economic effects."

She also reiterated earlier warnings that Murkowski's proposed vote, which is expected later this month, would block new national emission standards for cars and light trucks, resulting in a "patchwork of state standards" that would impose huge costs on automakers forced to comply with numerous regulations.

Jackson's comments came just days after Democrat senator Jeff Bingham delivered the keynote speech at the annual MIT Energy Conference, admitting that policy failures were undermining the development of a US clean tech industry.

"The policies that have been enacted to date are clearly not sufficient to establish the US as the leader in clean technology," he said, adding that "90 per cent of the production capacity for new clean technology is outside the US" . He cited Lithium-ion batteries as an example of a lucrative clean technology that was developed in the US but is now almost exclusively manufactured overseas.

Bingham added that the expansion of loan guarantees, increased investment in energy efficiency and some form of carbon pricing mechanism could all serve to revitalise US manufacturing, but warned that the climate change legislation that could deliver such policies was unlikely to make it through Congress this year.