Jackson GS ’86 to lead new EPA emission regulation efforts

Jackson was nominated for her position by President Barack Obama and confirmed in 2009. At her confirmation, she pledged to focus on “air pollution, toxic chemicals and children’s health issues, redevelopment and waste-site cleanup issues, and justice for communities who bear disproportionate risk and have much to gain from [Obama’s] green-collar economic agenda.”

“At the top of the list is the threat of climate change, which requires us to transform how we produce and use energy throughout the economy,” she said at the time of her confirmation.

Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.

The EPA’s first regulations of major sources of greenhouse gases impose new rules on firms that are building or altering large greenhouse gas-emitting plants and went into effect on Jan. 2. The regulations, which apply only to new facilities, will affect an estimated 400 facilities each year and fall under the New Source Performance Standards, which gave the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

The EPA also plans to announce new rules for existing power plants in May and for existing refineries in December, taking the first steps in an effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions across industries and regions over the next decade according to a timetable released last month. The Obama administrations hopes to achieve a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.

Jackson, who has a reputation for demanding strict compliance with regulations, said in a 2007 interview with the magazine The Positive Community that she believed “that God gave us this world and we have a moral obligation not to turn around and give the next generations a trash heap that they can’t live off of.”

However, she has promised a moderate course in following the most recent set of regulations with reasonable fines that will not be implemented until mid-2011.

Opponents have voiced concerns that the regulations will discourage economic growth, proposing congressional measures to limit the rules’ enforcement and challenging their legality as high as a federal appeals court. Several Republicans in Congress have claimed that the the regulations will discourage economic recovery.

Rep. Fred Upton (R–Mich.), the incoming chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that the new regulations are “nothing short of a backdoor attempt to implement [the EPA’s] failed job-killing cap-and-trade scheme.”

Thirteen states are also challenging the legality of the regulations, including Texas, which has announced its refusal to comply with the orders. A federal appeals court upheld Texas’s request for a hold on enforcement of the regulations while the court considers the case.

Environmental law experts favor the EPA’s case, citing a 2007 Supreme Court ruling giving it authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but have said Texas may be able to gain a longer postponement through its claim that the EPA did not open its regulations to discussion for the specified period of notice and comment.

Geosciences and Wilson School professor Michael Oppenheimer called the new regulations “a sensible first step.” Oppenheimer expressed confidence that “by the time these regulations actually start to bite on industry and individuals, the economy, I imagine, will have substantially recovered,” citing improvements in the national GDP.

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Oppenheimer also said he doubted that the EPA is planning to implement emissions trading. “If the regulations are tough enough, it will probably cause the industries involved to ask for cap and trade,” Oppenheimer said, adding, “I think that’s probably [the EPA’s] strategy.”

The EPA’s action is also motivated by the need to limit emissions to meet the terms of the Copenhagen Accord — of which the U.S. is a signatory nation — under which its actions are already overdue, Oppenheimer noted.

Jackson earned an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Tulane University and a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton. After Princeton, she immediately began working for the EPA, where she spent 16 years regulating hazardous waste and overseeing cleanup projects in New Jersey.

She also worked for the New Jersey Deparment of Environmental Protection, where she led over 1,000 compliance sweeps in communities where pollution had been neglected, and was appointed as commissioner of environmental protection in 2005 by Gov. Jon Corzine. She served as Corzine’s chief of staff for two weeks in 2008 before being appointed to her position at the EPA.