We submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding changes to its New Source Review (NSR) applicability regulations. Our comments focus on EPA’s failure to perform a cost-benefit analysis for the proposed rule.
Both Executive Order 12,866 and the Administrative Procedure Act require EPA to assess the costs and benefits of this action. The agency, however, fails to analyze how its reforms to NSR’s emissions-accounting policy could affect air-pollution emissions or regulatory compliance costs. Instead, EPA claims that the proposed rule has no costs or benefits. As our comments explain, this is untrue. We also rebut the agency’s claim that the rule’s effects are too uncertain to consider.