For Immediate Release:
May 22, 2015

Contact:
Craig Richardson
[email protected]
202-758-8301

– MEDIA ADVISORY-  

Attorney-Authors of Regulatory Comments that Raised Serious Legal Issues re: EPA’s Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Mandate Available to Discuss Reports that EPA May Drop this Mandate

Who/What: Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) Senior Legal Fellow and well-known FOIA attorney, Chris Horner, and long-time EPA attorney and E&E Legal general counsel David W. Schnare, PhD, both of whom authored Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards comments raising serious legal issues surrounding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) controversial mandate that new coal-fired plants install Carbon Capture and Storage Technology (CCS), available to discuss possibility that EPA may drop CCS mandates due to E&E Legal’s comments.

When: Immediately

Where: Telephone & Skype interviews, in-studio or remote link-up in the DC, Charlottesville areas.

In March 2014, Senior Legal Fellow Chris Horner and former EPA attorney David W. Schnare submitted comments on behalf of E&E Legal and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC) to EPA’s Proposed Rule: Standards of Performance for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units. Drawing on items buried in EPA’s docket as well as information from parties familiar with internal improprieties, these raised serious legal issues that EPA would likely face regarding their mandate that new coal-fire power plants install CCS.

“We had learned that EPA not only failed to consider but misrepresented expert opinion set forth in the interagency review in order to claim that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been ‘adequately demonstrated’ for purposes of the Clean Air Act (CAA) section 111,” said Horner. “The truth is that the experts had even established the opposite, in effect, that CCS has been demonstrated to be not viable.”

The Daily Caller (and other news outlets) reported yesterday that EPA is now considering dropping the controversial CCS mandate based in large part on E&E Legal’s comments. Reported the Daily Caller, the “DCNF was also told by sources that comments filed about the regulation from opposition groups have cast further doubts on the legality of EPA’s CCS mandate. In particular, comments from the Energy & Environment Legal Institute submitted in March were a cause for concern within the EPA.”

Added Horner, “given EPA’s reliance on the CCS claim to make its 111d rule legal, and the necessity of the 111d rule’s legality for its 111b rule to go into effect, the entire house of cards was at risk if we demonstrated this when suing on the rule after it goes final. Making this more egregious, DoE had paid a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars to learn this information and lesson that EPA ignored and even misrepresented.”

In addition to his National reputation as a leading energy and transparency attorney, Horner has written on numerous topics in publications ranging from law reviews to legal and industrial trade journals to print and online opinion pages, and is the author of three best-selling books: Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America (Regnery, 2010); Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (Regnery, 2008) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism (Regnery, 2007), which spent half of 2007 on the New York Times bestseller list; and his most recent, The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information ‘Criminal” (Threshold). He received his Juris Doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis where he received the Judge Samuel Breckenridge Award for Advocacy.

Dr. David W. Schnare Esq. Ph.D., a thirty-three year veteran of the EPA, serves as General Counsel of E&E Legal and is also (pro bono) Director of the Center for Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute, Virginia’s premier independent public policy foundation.  His honors include: Four Gold and four Bronze Medals from the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Vice President’s Hammer Award and multiple U.S. Department of Justice Certificates of Commendation. His academic achievements include Law Review at George Mason University School of Law; Inns of Court (GMUSL); Sigma Xi (Science Honorary); Delta Omega Service Award (Public Health Honorary); National Science Foundation Research Fellowship; LEGIS Fellowship; and the U.S. Public Health Fellowship. He is an Honorary Member of the Water Quality Association. Dr. Schnare earned his JD in 1999 from George Mason University School of Law. While attending law school (and working full-time at EPA) he was the Hogan (Environmental) Essay winner and served on the Law Review and the Inns of Court. He graduated Cum Laude.

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The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.

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