EPA’s McCarthy: “The clean energy train has left the station”
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy warned the world’s energy leaders Wednesday they would need to adapt, shifting away from fossil fuels towards cleaner burning sources like wind and solar power.
“The clean energy train has left the station, folks,” McCarthy said at the IHS Energy CERAWeek conference in Houston. “We are really hitting the ground running in 2016. The energy market is shifting and we anticipate taking meaningful climate action.”
In December close to 200 countries, including the United States, agreed to begin taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions towards keeping the earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius.
Having already tackled car emissions, the EPA is now moving ahead on cleaning up power plants and the oil and gas industry.
This week the agency released updated data on methane pollution in the United States, showing emissions from oil and gas operations were 27 percent greater than previously estimated.
“We’ve known for a while there has been a big discrepancy,” McCarthy said. “We have been working with the industry to try and get some voluntary efforts. Those efforts have not been as successful as they have with other industries.”
The draft methane rule released last summer would require oil and gas drillers to fix leaks in their infrastructure and capture escaping methane during drilling. But it only applies to new wells, and environmentalists are pressuring the agency to expand it to existing wells.
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