Arguing against a utility before state regulators can feel like a David and Goliath battle. 

Utilities routinely spend millions on experts, attorneys, and computer modeling to support their requests to raise rates, upgrade equipment, or try out new programs.

Consumer or environmental groups that lack the resources to dissect complicated testimony or follow cases for months on end can struggle to influence outcomes.

A new Minnesota law aims to help level the playing field for organizations seeking a voice at the Public Utilities Commission.

Starting this fall, small nonprofits that argue before the commission will be eligible to seek compensation for sharing testimony or expertise that ends up shaping commissioners’ decisions. 

Those payments were already available to groups intervening in utility rate cases, but the new law expands them to a wider range of cases. They include cases in which utilities are seeking permission to implement pilot programs, collect money for infrastructure projects, or win approval for performance measures. 

Former state Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, a Democrat who represented a suburban district south of Minneapolis, lobbied to expand intervenor compensation on behalf of several BIPOC organizations. “Intervenor” is utility commission jargon for a group or individual that represents a stakeholder throughout a case. Torres Ray said she hopes the change helps regulators hear more from groups representing disadvantaged communities. 

“It will allow tribal nations and small-scale nonprofit organizations to participate in the process,” she said. “It gives these organizations the tools and the compensation to effectively do this advocacy on behalf of people that may or may not be there [at commission hearings] and typically are not because they cannot afford to be.”

Public Utility Commission cases are where some of the most important decisions about energy take place, from where electricity comes from to how much customers pay for it, explained Annie Levenson-Falk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, which advocates for ratepayers. Participating in these cases is also “difficult, time intensive and resource intensive.” Intervenors must make verbal and written arguments in a certain way before the commission. She said personal testimony can play a role, but experts also play a prominent role in the proceedings.

Public Utilities Commissioner Joseph Sullivan said he and his colleagues welcome the new law. 

“We want people to be involved; we want Minnesotans to take advantage of the opportunity to weigh in on what’s going on in the energy world,” Sullivan said.

The legislation defines what kinds of cases allow for payment to intervenors and requires periodic reporting on the program. Compensation for most cases will top out at $50,000, with a $75,000 limit for certain proceedings. No organization can recover more than $200,000 annually. 

The money can be used to pay for staff or consultants’ time and costs related to preparation, filings, hearings, and stakeholder meetings, but not overhead expenses. No organization with an annual budget larger than $600,000 or more than 30 full-time employees is eligible for the payments.

The commission has granted compensation in rate cases eight times and declined one request. The Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota and the Energy CENTS Coalition are the only groups that have received the payments in the past.

Advocates expect the number of organizations and individuals receiving compensation to grow because it will now be available for more types of cases. It won’t be without risk for intervenors, though.

The commission will consider payment only after issuing an order or judgment, often months after groups provide testimony, providing no guarantee of reimbursement. Rewards will be based on whether the organization’s feedback shows up in the commission’s decisions.

The money will come from utilities and their ratepayers, not the commission or taxpayers. The law caps the intervenor budget at $275,000 for Minnesota Power and $1.25 million for Xcel Energy, with a smaller amount for Otter Tail Power.

Marcus Mills, environmental strategist for Black Visions Minnesota and board vice president for Community Power, a coalition advocating for local clean energy, said the changes could bring more diversity into the regulatory process.

Community Power generally does not have a budget to provide expert testimony at regulatory hearings, but it did pay a consultant a few years ago to speak to policymakers about a concept called inclusive financing. The nonprofit might consider intervening more often in the future, Mills said.

Kevin Pranis, marketing manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America for Minnesota and North Dakota, is among the law’s critics. The state government already pays civil servants to look after the public’s interests, he said. The law may also pay groups that already have the resources to participate in hearings.

“That’s a hard sell, not just for our members, but for the general public,” Pranis said.

Unions are not eligible for compensation pay, and he does not think many groups will participate because the risk of hiring an expert and not getting reimbursed will be too significant. Instead of intervenor pay, he has suggested the commission create an ombudsperson to help organizations understand the process and how to present their opinions.

Levenson-Falk is more optimistic about the potential impact: “I hope it will provide the support needed to get more diversity of viewpoints represented in these proceedings.”

New Minnesota law aims to lower barrier for participating in public utility cases is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Few government officials will have a bigger say in how states transition from fossil fuels than public utility commissioners.

Yet, for the most part, these boards operate below the radar, rarely drawing the level of scrutiny faced by other agencies or officeholders.

Jared Heern wants to change that.

In an effort to draw more attention to the role of state utility commissions, Heern, a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society, recently assembled data on the more than 800 commissioners who served on public utility commissions across the country between 2000 and 2020. The results are laid out in a new study published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science.

“PUCs are so central to the rapid action that’s needed in decarbonization, especially since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the amount of money that’s going to be going out for that,” Heern said. “They should be getting a lot more attention than they have been and climate change makes that much more important.” 

Utility commissions set rates, oversee investments in generation and transmission equipment, and enforce renewable energy requirements, among other things.

Heern’s study found that public utility commissions are appointed by governors in 41 states; elsewhere they are elected. The dominant role governors play in determining who sits on these commissions is something that is all but overlooked at election time, Heern said. 

“We should be evaluating governors on what kind of PUC they’re going to appoint,” he said. 

When it comes to their backgrounds, most commissioners, 42%, previously worked in utility regulation, something Heern views as positive. Next common was having been an elected official, or part of a governor’s network. A quarter of commissioners came from the utility or fossil fuel industry, experience that could potentially influence their policy preferences in favor of those interests, Heern said. 

Just 19% of commissioners overall had an environmental background. However, that proportion has increased faster than any other, more than doubling from 12% in 2000 to 29% in 2020. 

“That was pleasantly surprising,” Heern said. “There seems to be a lot more focus on appointing commissioners that have connections to renewable energy or environmental NGOs.”

Lack of diversity

But another study found that public utility commissions are still largely lacking in a diversity of life experiences and in an understanding of how their decisions can differently affect low-income and environmental justice communities. Issued by the Chisholm Legacy Project, a Maryland-based nonprofit that supports Black communities seeking to advance environmental justice, the report captured the gender and race of the country’s 197 sitting commissioners as of August 2022. 

It found that 65% of commissioners were male; in six states, the commissioners were all male. Eighty-two percent were White; 24 states had no commissioners of color. Four states — Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Utah — had all White male commissioners.

Only 11% of commissioners were Black, 3% were Hispanic or Latino, 3% were Asian, and 1% were Native American.

“This makeup does not reflect the racial diversity of the US as a whole,” the report noted, “with 19% of Americans identifying as Hispanic/Latino, 14% identifying as Black, and 6% identifying as Asian, according to the 2021 US Census.”

The lack of representational governance is the most glaring in the deep South, one of the most racially diverse regions of the country. Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia have the highest proportions of Black populations in the country, yet minimal diversity of representation, if any, on their public utility commissions, all of which are elected, the report said. 

“That’s not an accident — that’s a whole overlay of segregation, voter suppression, and other factors,” said Charles Hua, a Harvard researcher who co-authored the study with Jacqui Patterson, Chisholm’s founder and executive director. “But those four states have some of the highest energy burdens in the U.S. The regulators have the capacity to do something about it, but they have allowed the utilities to run with their proposals that exacerbate these problems.”

Patterson said her organization plans to begin putting out information on commissioners running for office so voters in frontline communities can make informed choices. 

“They want to make sure that they look at this office when they’re going to vote, and we, as advocates, will make that information easier to find,” she said. 

New approaches to engagement

Yet another report issued earlier this year by the Brown University Climate and Development Lab explored how the New England states can advance an equitable energy transition. The findings, based on a series of workshops held throughout the region, include a list of actions that utility commissions can take to better engage a broader group of stakeholders.

The recommendations include improving communication with the public, being proactive about reaching out to affected stakeholders, and making it easier for the public to participate in proceedings.

“These proceedings can be very technical and opaque,” said Oliver Tully, director of utility innovation at the Acadia Center. “It can be challenging for groups who are already limited in terms of resources to participate meaningfully in proceedings where there is a lot of jargon and data to wade through.”  

The climate lab report highlights one utility commission that is going out of its way to be more accessible: the Connecticut Public Utility Regulatory Authority, known as PURA. Chair Marissa Gillett has made it her mission to make the authority much more transparent and highly visible since her appointment in 2019.

“It started as an attempt to ‘brand’ PURA — it didn’t really have an identity with legislators, the media or stakeholders, beyond the traditional utility stakeholders we interact with,” Gillett said. 

She began building that brand herself with what she calls her “PURA 101 roadshow.” Gillett travels around the state delivering 40-minute presentations — some four dozen of them so far — explaining what PURA’s mission is, how electric rates are set, and how to engage with the commission. 

“I give the presentation to whoever shows up — two people or two dozen,” she said. 

The authority also built out its social media channels, including posting tutorial videos on YouTube explaining, for example, how to navigate the online docket system or what a particular decision means. 

Still not satisfied with the level of public comments they were receiving on important dockets, Gillett more recently decided to introduce a quarterly newsletter highlighting major decisions in plain language, and alerting recipients to future cases they might want to weigh in on.

During the past legislative session, the authority threw its support behind a new stakeholder compensation program contained within SB 7, a major energy regulation reform bill. The program, which launches in 2024, will provide financial assistance to stakeholder groups that represent limited-income residents, environmental justice communities, or small business customers in a PURA proceeding. 

These groups will be eligible to receive up to $100,000 per stakeholder group, and up to $300,000 for all stakeholder groups per proceeding, with a cap of $1.2 million for all stakeholder groups per calendar year. 

“For some proceedings, you really need an attorney or expert witnesses, and the idea is to start to empower groups and bridge that gap,” Gillett said. 

Looking ahead, Gillett said, she recognizes that much, much more investment will be required to help states adapt to climate change. And consumers are going to want to know where that money is going and who is managing it. 

“There’s so much more attention and urgency,” she said. “And consumers are increasingly more aware of what they’re spending on power. The commissions that have not figured out that they’re going to increasingly be in the spotlight are going to be caught flat-footed.”

Who decides where we get electricity and how much we pay? Mostly White, politically connected men is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Senate Bill 9 says agencies must cut their use of phrases including “must,” “shall,” “require” and “prohibit.”

Ohio Republicans are again pushing for arbitrary cuts in “regulatory restrictions” with a bill that, if enacted, could significantly weaken consumer, environmental, and public health protections.

A similar bill died in December when the last legislative session ended without final votes after conference committee work. Sens. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, and Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, have resurrected the proposal this session as Senate Bill 9.

The two lawmakers are chair and vice chair of the Ohio Senate’s Government Oversight and Reform Committee, which has held three hearings on the bill so far. A fourth hearing is on the agenda for today’s committee meeting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.

“SB 9 is an across-the-board 30% reduction of ‘regulatory restrictions’ without any concern over their impact on clean energy or our environment,” said Trent Dougherty, general counsel for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund. “Unless there are amendments to this bill, Ohioans could see a 30% increase in pollution, 30% reduction in quality of life for Ohio communities and 30% more roadblocks to our clean energy economy.”

“I find this legislation deeply troubling,” said Sen. Hearcel Craig, a Democrat from Columbus and ranking minority member for the Ohio Senate committee. “This number was selected without any factual evidence that it would benefit Ohioans.”

In Craig’s view, “Ohioans should be concerned with the increase in air pollution and the potential impacts this bill would have on our climate if this bill were to pass.” He likewise worries about the bill’s implications for social justice.

“The Ohio Departments of Jobs and Family Services, Health and Medicaid have rules and regulations that keep Ohioans safe and healthy and ensure they are equitably treated,” Craig said. “These are policies that I am terrified will go away due to this trend toward regulation reductions. We have a duty to protect our most vulnerable populations, and this legislation could impact the health and quality of life for many Ohioans.”

Word games

Many, if not most, state agency actions are authorized by statute, so it’s unclear how feasible it would be for many agencies to meet their targets under the bill.

Like earlier versions, SB 9 defines regulatory restrictions based on the use of words such as “shall,” “must,” “require” and “prohibit.” In addition to the bill’s percentage target, it would mandate that any new regulatory requirements could only be adopted if two other rules are cut. An agency likewise could not adopt any new rule if it would “cause the number of regulatory restrictions to exceed the state limit.”

Roegner’s sponsor testimony described the accumulation of new laws and regulations over time as “sludge in the economic engine.” To support her claim of Ohio’s many “restrictions,” Roegner referenced a linguistic analysis from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. The Center for Responsive Politics has linked the group to the Koch brothers’ network.

“This study did not look at the purpose of these regulations, including whether they set standards for food or building safety,” Craig said. Instead, the report counted how many times various words were used, including “shall,” “must” and so on. “Cutting regulations just because certain politicians think our laws include the word ‘must’ too many times is not good public policy,” he said.

Roegner also cited work by the Mercatus Center to claim that U.S. per capita income would be about $13,000 higher if regulations had been held at 1980 levels from then until 2012. Yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s data for the same period show that the country’s gross domestic product grew dramatically as emissions of six common pollutants fell. Environmental regulation played a significant role in driving improved air quality.

Roegner’s testimony acknowledged that some regulations can have a positive impact. And SB 9’s text does call for consideration of rules’ continued need and adverse impacts on businesses or other persons or entities. Yet nothing in the bill or in her or McColley’s sponsor testimony requires an explicit cost-benefit analysis of rules before any rescission.

Another provision in the bill would require agencies to consider whether Ohio rules impose “a more severe duty or liability than restrictions in neighboring states in order to accomplish the same goal.” The language might be read to discourage more protective levels of regulation that might provide greater benefits than those of other states.

New provisions in the bill acknowledge that the executive branch can review agency rules at any time under Gov. Mike DeWine’s Common Sense Initiative. This year’s version also lets agencies ask the legislature’s Joint Commission on Agency Rule Review for adjustments to the bill’s requirements. Unless the legislative commission agrees, however, lawmakers might be able to invalidate rules.

Business vs. consumers?

Supporters of the bill that have testified so far include the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Americans for Prosperity-Ohio and others.

“A comprehensive inventory of agency restrictions will give policymakers a clearer picture of the state’s bureaucratic red tape, and capping regulatory restrictions will force the state to prioritize any proposed restrictions more carefully,” said researcher Greg Lawson in his testimony for the Buckeye Institute.

Testifying against the bill, Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Bruce Weston emphasized the need for public utility regulations and called for a focused approach to any rule review.

“We know that some regulations, like those for creating so-called electric security plans, should be eliminated,” Weston said. “Those plans can hinder the competitive market that we support for power plants and other technologies that are emerging.” Nonetheless, he said, public utility regulation is necessary to protect Ohioans from monopoly power.

“In some instances that monopoly power shows itself in undue influence by utilities in this state,” Weston said. In particular, the scandal surrounding FirstEnergy and others over Ohio’s nuclear and coal bailout law “is an example of how undue utility influence can negatively impact Ohio utility consumers.”

Along those lines, though, Weston noted that “House Bill 6 is also an example of creating more government interference and regulation in the power plant market, instead of reliance on power plant competition. So, repealing House Bill 6 is consistent with reducing government regulation.”

The “reckless” SB 9 bill could threaten utility customers in other ways as well, Craig noted. Some years ago, the Public Utilities Commission found that Duke Energy had violated a winter heating rule, leading to the deaths of an elderly widow and her disabled son in 2011.

“Those rules exist to protect vulnerable Ohioans,” Craig said. “We cannot arbitrarily cut regulations. Ohioans could suffer.”

Ohio Republicans’ bill would force state agencies to reduce their rule books is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Since becoming chair of the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority last year, Marissa Gillett has supercharged efforts around grid modernization. 

The widespread and prolonged power outages that trailed Tropical Storm Isaias this month have added urgency to what was already a fast-and-furious effort to begin modernizing Connecticut’s electric grid.

Even amid the pandemic, Marissa P. Gillett, who took over as chair of the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) last year, has kept the grid modernization docket moving at a rapid-fire pace, issuing requests for proposals and holding virtual listening sessions in multiple subject areas, including energy storage, advanced metering, electric vehicles, and energy affordability. 

The events of recent weeks — with questions swirling around the storm readiness and response of Eversource and United Illuminating, the state’s two largest utilities — have demonstrated that grid reforms are long overdue, Gillett says. 

“Grid modernization is about more than modernizing the grid,” she said. “It’s also thinking about the way we regulate the utilities and invite third parties into the conversation. A lot of that is thoroughly needed, and I imagine a lot of ratepayers and businesses feel the same way after going through the storm.” 

Gillett, who previously worked in regulatory affairs in Maryland, has taken a decidedly tough tone with the utilities since the storm, which left hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses without power for days. In an Aug. 6 press release announcing PURA’s investigation into the utilities’ response, Gillett declared that she is not interested in “their excuses,” is committed to “reforming the utility landscape in Connecticut” and “will not settle for anything less.” 

Asked to respond to those comments, United Illuminating spokesperson Edward Crowder said they are open to a “robust dialogue” about how to improve storm readiness, but believe the investigation will conclude that the utility’s response was consistent with “our PURA-approved storm plan.” 

Likewise, Eversource spokesperson Mitchell Gross said that while the utility understands customer frustrations and will “fully participate” in the regulatory authority’s review, the restoration of power after this storm was actually completed 33% faster than after Superstorm Sandy and Tropical Storm Irene, even though the damage was more severe.

Even before the storm, Gillett had signaled that, under her watch, it’s PURA, not the utilities, who are in charge. 

Last February, she warned the utilities that they were moving too slowly in getting processes in place to sign up and issue credits to qualified subscribers in the state’s new shared solar program, and said PURA would impose fines if the companies did not meet the next deadline for submitting more detailed plans. 

Last week, the authority did just that, fining the companies $10,000 each for what it viewed as another set of insufficient filings that amounted to only “a rough sketch” of customer enrollment processes. 

“Back in February when we met with the utilities on their substandard filings, we made it clear that we had a set of expectations,” Gillett said. “I followed through on what I said I was going to do. I feel very strongly that I need to hold myself accountable and PURA accountable before I can have any measure of hope at holding the utilities accountable.”

Spokespeople for both utilities said the companies are committed to the program. 

PURA also temporarily suspended a delivery fee increase approved for Eversource that caused an uproar among ratepayers when it went into effect in July. The authority is reexamining the rate adjustment “to ensure that Eversource is not over-collecting revenues in the short term at the expense of ratepayers during this period of financial hardship.”

Renewable energy advocates in Connecticut say they are pleased with the new tone at PURA. 

“We have nothing to say other than kudos for the great job this commissioner is doing,” said Amy McClean, Connecticut director for the Acadia Center. The advocacy community has “been pleasantly surprised by the unafraid approach to tough issues that need to be addressed. We cannot keep doing business as usual.”

Gillett has also garnered praise from the Connecticut Industrial and Energy Consumers, which represents large commercial and industrial ratepayers. At a recent listening session hosted by PURA on energy affordability concerns among those ratepayers, the organization’s attorney, Amanda De Vito Trinsey, thanked Gillett, saying, “I do work in a lot of states, and it’s unprecedented for a commission to spend this much time looking into C&I affordability as a category.”

The so-called “grid mod” docket that is the focus of so much of PURA’s attention these days is not new — it dates to 2017. But Gillett supercharged what had been a slow-moving process shortly after her arrival, setting up what are now 11 sub-dockets moving on their own tracks.

“The Connecticut grid mod docket stands out in terms of its breadth and pace, especially at this moment in time,” said Sean Burke, a policy associate at the Northeast Clean Energy Council, which is a participant in the energy storage sub-docket. “They are looking at a whole host of issues in a rapid environment, and taking in a lot of stakeholder feedback.”

In response to a PURA request for proposals for program designs for energy storage earlier this year, the clean energy council, in partnership with the Energy Storage Association, submitted a proposal that would allow for compensation of third-party providers of storage resources.

“The utility would call on storage resources that have signed onto a utility tariff, and those resources would be compensated for performing during the time the utility is asking them to perform,” Burke said.

Energy storage is one of many areas in which PURA believes it can begin implementing changes on its own, without waiting for a legislative nod, Gillett said. She and her staff will sift through all the storage proposals submitted, then come up with one comprehensive proposal “that will put Connecticut on the map for having an energy storage market, because we don’t have one right now.”

PURA is also prioritizing the expanded use of advanced metering, which can provide real-time data on usage and outages, and the creation of reliability and resilience program metrics and performance targets, she said.

While the sub-dockets are operating on different timeframes, all of them should wrap up by the end of 2021, in time for the utilities to incorporate the outcomes of those dockets in their comprehensive distribution plans due in 2022, she said.

Both utilities have submitted detailed plans for how they might transition to an advanced metering infrastructure in the coming years, in response to another PURA request for proposals. The timing is right for Eversource, as more than 800,000 of the company’s electrical meters will be 20 years or older in the next five years, Gross said.

Connecticut regulator isn’t interested in utilities’ ‘excuses’ on power grid failures is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The study linked the EPA’s relaxed enforcement during the pandemic with higher air pollution and COVID-19 cases.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said he had not read a study linking the agency’s relaxed pollution enforcement during the pandemic with air pollution increases and elevated COVID-19 cases and deaths.

The study by researchers at American University was widely reported earlier this month. It used EPA daily air quality readings to find a 13% increase in pollution in counties with six or more facilities required to comply with routine reporting requirements. The EPA said it was freezing enforcement efforts for routine compliance requirements on March 26.

“I haven’t seen that study yet,” Wheeler said in response to the Energy News Network’s question last week at an event in Lakewood, Ohio, where he announced federal grants for trash cleanup in the Great Lakes.

Wheeler characterized the changes as procedural. He also touted a claim that air pollution has gone down 7% since President Donald Trump took office, although he acknowledged that factors besides regulation were at work.

“Certainly some of the air reductions are attributed to fuel switching within the electric power sector, but that’s not all of it,” Wheeler said. Fuel switching refers to more reliance on natural gas as the market for coal has continued to decline, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to prop up the coal industry.

The lakeside appearance came roughly three weeks after the release of updated research from American University researchers Claudia Persico and Kathryn Johnson, linking increased pollution to more cases and deaths from COVID-19.

The analysis found that counties where the EPA rollback may have supported increased air pollution had an average 39% more COVID-19 cases and 19% more deaths from the virus.

The particular rollback that the team focused on was a March 26 announcement that the EPA would freeze enforcement efforts for routine compliance reporting during the pandemic if self-reporting of pollution levels was more challenging because of the pandemic. The memorandum also suggested the EPA might not seek civil penalties for going over permit limits if violations were related to the pandemic. 

The EPA’s civil enforcement efforts largely depend on that self-reporting, Persico said. The study looked at data collected from sensors in counties with six or more sites that are required to report pollution emissions. Persico and Johnson then compared the timing of those changes in short-term pollution with county data from Johns Hopkins University on COVID-19 cases and deaths.  

“We find that increases in pollution resulting from the rollback of EPA enforcement led to large and statistically significant increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths,” the researchers wrote. The findings build on other research that has linked pollution to health conditions that make COVID-19 cases worse.

“It’s expensive to regulate pollution, from the company’s standpoint,” Persico said. But the EPA relies on companies’ routine reporting as the basis for its enforcement. And companies do the routine reporting because otherwise they can be subject to separate and additional penalties.

“If you remove the penalties, it might be cheaper from the company’s standpoint to emit more pollution,” Persico said. And even if companies don’t intentionally decide to exceed their permit limits, relaxed requirements for doing the routine reporting could arguably mean a longer lag time before companies do anything to fix situations that lead to violations.

The EPA may well still be pursuing enforcement against egregious cases, so Wheeler’s statement that the change doesn’t affect the amount of pollution companies are allowed to emit may have some “partial truth,” Persico said. “But overall what I find is that the overall effect was to increase pollution.”

Even before the pandemic, other researchers had noted increases in air pollution since Trump took office, Persico said. She cited a 2019 report on particulate matter for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Some Ohio counties failed to meet one or more standards in 2018, 2019 and 2020, even if the agency hadn’t changed its compliance status, EPA data shows. The EPA also told The Atlantic last year that increased levels of particulate matter and ozone were likely due to wildfires and weather conditions.

Both types of events are becoming more frequent and extreme due to climate change. Experts have also linked health problems from climate change to nitrous oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter released by burning fossil fuels.

The Trump administration rescinded the Clean Power Plan to deal with climate change, and its replacement has been criticized for potentially leading to more deaths. A July 14 General Accounting Office report also found that the EPA substantially underestimated economic damages from climate change in order to justify its plan.

The EPA has engaged in dozens of additional deregulation actions designed to ease compliance obligations for industries, as noted on the Brookings Institution’s interactive tracker.

“The Trump administration has taken actions that allow more pollution overall by continuing to roll back Clean Air Act regulatory standards, impermissibly skewing some ozone nonattainment area designations by bypassing sound science, and improperly injecting political pressures to override fact-based decisions by agency staff,” said Executive Director Howard Learner at the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

“The Trump administration’s policies are harmful to healthier clean air for all Americans,” Learner added.

Wheeler dismisses study claiming EPA role in elevated air pollution, COVID-19 cases is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.