White House: 'We will not back down' on climate fight The plan that is the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate change strategy would give states two more years to meet the first implementation goals.

President Barack Obama’s top aide vowed on Wednesday that the White House won’t yield to Republican attacks on its landmark climate change rule, even as the administration prepared to soften a deadline for states to cut the greenhouse gases from their power plants.

“We will not back down. We will finalize a stronger rule,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough told an event hosted by The New Republic and the liberal Center for American Progress. “We’ll veto ideological riders to stop this plan or undercut our bedrock environmental laws. And we’ll move forward on behalf of the American people with the vision set forward by the president.”


His comments come as the administration prepares to release as early as Monday a final Environmental Protection Agency rule that delays for two years the initial deadline for states to begin cutting the greenhouse gas pollution from their power plants.

EPA would push back the deadline to 2022, rather than 2020, as the administration initially proposed last summer, a source familiar with the rule told POLITICO late Tuesday. But the ultimate 2030 deadline for states to achieve their final pollution cuts will remain in effect, the source said.

Early reactions showed the changes did little to dampen support for the rule from green groups and Democrats who have hailed the EPA plan as a major achievement, with some expecting the changes to help protect the rule from legal challenges. Reactions from conservatives and other opponents were muted, and there appeared to be little chance the new deadlines would win over any of EPA’s critics.

The plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s environmental agenda and his hopes to achieve a global climate deal, would for the first time seek cuts in the carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s fossil-fuel power plants while spurring the growth of renewable electricity sources such as wind and solar. The rule could come out as soon as Monday.

“There’s not a more important and pressing issue on the president’s agenda than climate,” McDonough said.

And he dismissed the attacks on the rule as a “stale chorus” from some Republicans and industry leaders who have already made up their minds about the effort.

“We know what to expect from them. It’s a well-worn playbook of scary tactics that are used again and again,” he said.

The 2020 deadline was one of the plan’s most-criticized aspects, drawing warnings from states that moving so fast could threaten the reliability of the nation’s electricity supply, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy had said months ago that she was willing to revisit the date. The agency hasn’t said whether it will offer concessions on other parts of the plan, such as a 2013 proposal that all new coal-fired power plants be required to install expensive, novel technology to capture and store their carbon emissions.

In conjunction with postponing the 2020 deadline, the administration will also roll out incentives to encourage states to deploy green energy and energy-efficiency programs before 2022, the source said.

None of the changes have any chance of stemming the barrage of criticism that the plan has drawn from Republicans and coal-state Democrats in Congress, who have denounced the entire set of regulations as a “war on coal” that would send electricity prices skyrocketing, continue an ongoing wave of shutdowns of coal-burning power plants and fail to do much to stem global warming. Some Republican governors and state legislatures have also vowed to resist the plan, with the encouragement of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But supporters of the plan say EPA’s move to delay the initial compliance deadline is likely to appeal to states.

“They’ve gone out of their way to give the states the time they need and I think the states are going to be, most of them, pretty happy with it,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

And clean-air advocates like the American Lung Association said the rule appeared to be “robust,” and they welcomed its effort to speed the shift to renewable power.

“To fight climate change successfully, carbon pollution must be cut significantly,” ALA President Harold P. Wimmer said. “Children, the elderly and people with lung diseases including asthma face some of the greatest risks, including from ozone and soot that climate change makes worse.”

But Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he isn’t happy with the delays for states to meet the pollution goals.

“It is not OK. I want to see this thing move as quickly as possible to see what we can do about it,” Sanders told POLITICO.

And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said she saw the delay from the the 2020 deadline — a presidential election year — as a political move. Still, the longer time frame might temporarily defuse some of the opposition to it, she said.

“Maybe the imperative, the urgency kind of settles a little bit,” she said. “But I think you’re still going to have folks that are still very concerned about its application in their states. I know in Alaska we are.”

The New York Times and The Washington Post had initially reported the delaying of the 2020 deadline late Tuesday night. The states will also get another year, until 2018, to submit those final plans to EPA.

Many states and utilities have complained that the 2020 deadline is too early and could threaten the stability of the power grid if coal-fired power plants were taken off line too quickly or if wind and solar sources grew too quickly. Opponents have also filed legal challenges against the proposed carbon-capturing requirement, accusing EPA of violating federal law by proposing to mandate an untested technology.

With the initial compliance deadline delayed by two years to 2022, the Obama administration is looking for a way to keep states from sitting on their hands. So early-adopted states that make clean energy efforts in 2020 will get extra credit toward complying with the final rule, the source said.

“It was an idea born to help accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency in states so that … there’s a reason for them to get an early start toward meeting their early compliance goals,” the source said.

The source expects a “snowball effect” from the incentives and other components of the final rule to help states meet and surpass their targets.

Another person briefed by the White House on Tuesday said administration officials stressed the importance of increased renewable energy use to comply with emissions goals. The timing of the release is “imminent” but depends on the president’s schedule, the source said.

EPA for months has said that it was taking a hard look at the first compliance deadline, and a two-year delay means the administration may sacrifice little in overall emissions reductions while acknowledging the states’ logistical and planning issues. It is unclear how the states individual pollution-cutting goals may change in the final rule, or if the administration will change its overall goal by 2030 that the nation’s power plants produce 30 percent less carbon that they had in 2005.

More broadly, Republicans and industry critics have complained that the rule exceeds EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act because goes well beyond requiring pollution controls at the power plants themselves. Instead, it allows states to comply using steps such as offering incentives for energy conservation or quicker deployment of wind and solar power, and opens the door to states joining in regional cap-and-trade compacts.

One renewable energy industry source speculated that the new two-year delay for the first compliance deadline could help support the rule in the coming legal fight, since it showed that the administration was making an effort to be flexible and take into account the concerns of states and industry.

“They want to make sure they’re in the right legal position and that they’re accommodating for the industry,” the source said.

The White House has declined to comment about details of the rule or its planned rollout.

Andrew Restuccia and Darren Goode contributed to this report.