Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) filed suit against the Department of Energy (DOE) for certain emails and other records that also were requested in September 2014 by requested by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton and others as described in the complaint, relating to EPA’s greenhouse gas NSPS rulemaking.

E&E Legal is informed of the existence of certain correspondence compiled for production to the Committee and subcommittees addressing EPA’s ignorance and misrepresentation of expert input during the NSPS inter-agency review process.

These correspondence were sought by House Energy & Commerce to review possible confirmation that EPA had ignored EPACT 2005 to rely upon federally funded projects as proof that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) was adequately demonstrated. They have taken on a new light, however, when E&E Legal learned of problems with EPA’s interagency review, which problems on their own appear to demonstrate the rule is unlawful. E&E Legal referenced its comments to EPA to that effect in its complaint.

Reasons for pursuing the information in addition to the Committee asking for it include concerns about how much (if any) of what DoE compiled was withheld from the Committee. Also, there is little doubt that any such material would benefit from review by knowledgeable, dedicated experts in the matter to parse the true meaning and issues of the interagency correspondence; making it available for public review improves the chances this information will be fully utilized.

As such, and as part of a series of requests of EPA and DoE (2), E&E Legal is pursuing this correspondence to air the internal concerns expressed over EPA’s actions, particularly as the deadline for completing internal review of its NSPS neared and, we are informed, EPA scrambled to remedy the obvious lack of consideration of the realities of CCS’s problems in its rulemaking.