Electricity generation already and we hope to build on the progress that is currently going on and frankly has been going on for years at the state and local level. States are already participating in their own market based programs to cut pollution. From carbon. I should make sure that everybody says when i mean carbon, it means more than 35 states have clean energy targets. More than 25 have already set Energy Efficiency goals and have cut their energy waste and over 1000 mayors across the country have signed agreements to cut Carbon Pollution. Clearly, states and local communities are doing their jobs as incubators of innovation leading the way to cleaner, more affordable, more sustainable energy. Fighting Climate Change makes Good Business sense. Thats worth repeating. Climate change just makes Good Business sense. As the president has pointed out, more than 500 businesses, including gm and nike, called this and i quote, one of the greatest opportunities of the 21st century. So we know rejecting our kids from harmful pollution is something that just cannot be solved overnight. It is going to take a broad, concerted effort from all levels of government as well as the private sector as well as individuals sitting here and beyond, as well as the International Community, but make no mistake about it. Epas action today to address Carbon Pollution from new power step forward in this long clean clean Energy Journey and it is a a necessary step to address a Public Health challenge that we all simply cannot afford to avoid any longer. The good news is we can successfully face the challenge of Climate Change but only if we Work Together. We have proven time after time that setting a fair clean act that setting a fair Clean Air Act standards to protect Public Health does not cause the sky to fall. The economy does not crumble. In fact, we are already seeing investments in clean energy pay off. Just this week, the department of energy released a report showing the cost of renewables are dropping while the use has grown. Just last year, in 2012, the u. S. Deployed almost twice as much wind as it did just the year before. Working together with input from states, communities, tribes, industry, and environmental advocates, we have grown our economy. We have driven innovation, we have created healthier, safer, more Livable Communities to hand down to our children and our grandchildren. Established standards for passenger giggles. Those standards will save consumers thousands of dollars at the pump. They did not cripple the Auto Industry. They made it more competitive, by working on and on with industry, the united auto workers, environmental advocates, he got the job and we got the job done right. With the support of the Auto Industry, we achieved standards that will cut Carbon Pollution from our cars in half by 2025. And the average driver will save more than 8,000 at the pump over the life of those cars. Far from the Auto Industry collapsing, it is actually thriving. Over 300,000 jobs have been added in that industry alone since the president of the United States rescued it from collapse. 40 years of Clean Air Act history proves we can reduce pollution while at the same time create jobs and strengthen the economy. The old roles might have said that we cannot protect our environment and protect Economic Growth at the same time. You heard it. In america, we have always sought out and used new technologies. We have used science, research and development, and discovery to make those old rules obsolete. We have the knowhow and the ingenuity to take on Climate Change. We can, we must turn this Public Health and environmental challenge into an economic opportunity. As the president has reminded us, all we need is the courage to act. For me, i muster that courage every time i look into the wonderful of faces of my three children, daniel, maggie, and julie. In the end, this is really what this is all about for all of us, our obligation to leave our children a world that is as healthy and safe as the one that we inherited. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Isnt your proposal a ban on new coal power plants given the fact that Carbon Capture and other technologies are, at this point, not proven expensive than not yet ready for primetime . Who wrote that question . Were they listening to my speech . [laughter] probably. Clearly not. I really appreciate the question and im glad it came up first. Ccs is a technology that is feasible and available today. We know that. How do we know that . Its been demonstrated to be effective. We know that its been demonstrated and it is being actually constructed on real facilities today, not just unconventional facilities but coal facilities. They are actually being invested in and being constructed and the designs are now available for others that are coming up. I think the coal industry and those investors said there needs to be a certain pathway forward for coal to be successful now and into the future. I believe this proposal, rather than killing future coal, actually sets out a pathway forward for coal to continue to be part of the diverse mix in this country. Look. We know coal will be part of the Energy Generation that we rely on substantially over the next few decades. Why wouldnt we now acknowledge and invest in the type of technologies that will allow coal a future long beyond that . The president has made a commitment to support a Diverse Energy supply because it helps us economically, domestically, as well as it protects us from international concerns. We might as well invest today and set the pathway forward. We believe that this does that and we believe that, over time, you will be able to see that this is a reasonable, Cost Effective strategy as we move forward to keep coal in the energy mix. To what extent, if any, did the epa consider making concessions to aid the coal industry, or was that even a legitimate consideration during the discussions . The epa, and im very proud of the people who do this work thomas spent a great deal of time working with the industry themselves. We do it before, during, and after rulemaking, and we do it for one reason. Epa, while we are solely looking at regulating pollution, has to understand what kind of pollution reductions are achievable without doing significant damage to the companies that we are regulating. We know, and i have said before, that our standards rather than doing damage can actually promote an industry sector to grow. What we did here in this proposal was we worked strongly with the utilities to understand what technologies were available. We will work with them over the Comment Period so they understand what type of Carbon Capture sequestration will be necessary and at what level because it is only going to be partial ccs but it will be enough to make them competitive in a carbon constrained world and we have always, as the epa, do wonderful costbenefit analysis so that we can understand for the American People and lay it out in a public and transparent fashion so that they can understand the impacts of our rules and the Public Health protection to the costs associated and, in this case, we think we have done exactly the right job at looking at what the science and the data tells us, again, to make a sensible, reasonable steps forward to address what is essentially one of the greatest of the Health Challenges of our time, Climate Change. You told the house energy and Commerce Committee this week that coal will continue to be a significant source of energy in the u. S. For decades. What assurances do you have to offer to those who are skeptical of the epas motives . I think we have made our motives pretty clear. The epas job is to look at Environmental Health and protection. We implemented the Clean Air Act. Epa does not have aspirations outside of the authority that congress has given us. We just want to work on the pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act and we have taken a look at how to be reasonable, rational, understand the data, look at the technology available, and make sure that we craft our decisions in a way that is fully sciencebased, fully datadriven, and is reasonable and rational. Im not making a statement with this rule, nor would we ever, about some independent choice about what fuels we like or dont like. We are looking, as we always do, the ways in which we can reasonably reduce pollution under the Clean Air Act with the authorities that congress has given us. What steps will the epa take to ensure that electricity consumers will not be harmed . Please explain regional flexibility since some areas will feel more impact than others. That is a good question and let me make a note for myself so i dont forget. In this rulemaking, we have to keep in mind that this is about future power plants, new power plants, so, really, we needed to understand what technologies were available and we needed to make sure that we wrote a rule that took advantage of the most costeffective technologies given the fact that any investment as large as a power plant will be hanging around for a while. We are going to be living with that plant and those Technology Choices for decades to come. We dont think that is a regional issue. We think that is just about how you build a new power plant and how you use the most effective technologies. However, when you look at flexibilities, when you look at two of the changes that you saw in the rule that is different than the original proposal, one of them was on the natural gas side. If you look at the comments that came in under our proposal, there were questions and concerns about the level we had originally proposed and whether or not some of the smaller natural gas units used could really operationally and effectively achieve that standard in a consistent way. We have teed that up for a discussion establishing slightly different standards recognizing operational issues. These are all technical discussions that we look at in great detail. We looked at the averaging periods applicable to the standards. The 1100 pounds of co2 per megawatt hour is a 12month average. We also put in a flexibility for those facilities that would allow them to average over a sevenyear period. Why did we do that . It is not because we thought we would get lower environmental protection. It still requires partial ccs as it is designed and constructed. What we recognized was that ccs may provide a challenge out of the gate as to whether or not you understand how to operate it effectively, whether or not you have all of the equipment you need, as tuned up as it needed to be, so we gave flexibility to go to a slightly lower standard for the opportunity to have seven years to make the system right for you. That should be plenty of time given that ccs is already technically feasible, already available, and it is being constructed in facilities today. Why did the epa decided to shorten the flexibility option from 30 years to seven . That is a good followon question. I dont know. Im kidding. [laughter] i think we learned from the data that came in during the Comment Period. We began to understand what the challenges were with this technology and as i said before, we started looking at the shift in the Actual Energy world was looking like. If you remember during the original proposal, we had 15 really traditional coal proposals that were out there and they are not getting funded and are not moving forward. What we realized was that the ones that are attracting investment and the ones that will provide fuel diversity and certainty moving forward were ones that actually installed ccs. We understood that was a pathway forward. What we were able to do was get a much better handle on the kinds of adjustments that would need to be made. He got a better handle on how long it would take to address those issues, and we found a way to provide flexibility without losing the environmental protections that the original proposal had sought. We are getting the environmental reductions at the same time as providing just the right flexibility we need to make this work for the industry. Did the revised proposal factor in the updated social cost of carbon values . Yes. Let me hit this issue, if you dont mind, a little bit more robustly because it has become an issue of concern. Epas job when we do rulemaking is to look at the costs and benefits of our rules, and that means we are supposed to look at all of the benefits of the rules that we do, all of the costs to the extent that we can identify those through Peer Reviewed processes. Back in the Prior Administration in 2008, they did start looking at the cost of methane and factoring that into their rulemaking. This did not begin with this administration. That is because everybody recognized that carbon actually had a cost. I think we now know the cost is a lot larger than we had originally proposed. When you reduce carbon, it is factoring in to the ability to address Carbon Pollution in the changes that the world is experiencing relative to a changing climate. When this administration came in, they then began another process to look at what science has happened since then, what the modeling shows us about the earlier cost of methane projections. We updated it and we put it in a rule in 2010. There is a good technical document that is with that rule. I dont think it was an epa rule. But we put it out, and it was a document that was produced by the white house. Omb and the cea did a process and the epa was participating. We put it out, and we had a good discussion. We got public comment, and we move that forward with the rules, so we had a new cost of methane. And what it said was that we were using three of the models that are always used, most effectively, to estimate climate impacts, and we said that as the models are updated or in two years, we should look at it again because the information is changing as science comes in. That is how we do our business. That is what we did recently. We did an update. You know why . The models were updated. We did not change any inputs. We just listened to what Peer Reviewed scientists and economists told us about the real social cost of carbon. The year we put it out in a standard recently and it has caused anxiety which is why i wanted to explain this to you a little bit more fully although it may be boring the heck out of some of you, but it is an issue where people are concerned that we were not transparent. It went through a rulemaking process twice. It is in one now. If youre concerned we got the number wrong, put some comments in, but the federal government makes its decisions on the basis of peerreviewed science, whether that is about Public Health consequences or economic consequences. We are always open. We provide technical information. We take comments, consider that, and make decisions. Thats all this is. When shall e. P. A. Expect to finalize the regulations being proposed today . Well, the Clean Air Act gives us a oneyear time frame, and let me explain why that is. Because when this particular rule goes out it really does send a signal to the agency, to the market, that if you expect to start up and construct a facility, then you need to Pay Attention to these particular standards because thats going to be your obligation if they stay the same. So it really has an impact and the Clean Air Act recognizes that and asks us to complete it within a year. Now, i will say that that doesnt mean that over the course of the Comment Period we wont Pay Attention and there might not be adjustments but it does send a signal to the market right away and were hoping that that signal is that there is a way to build a coal facility that is clean and can operate for a long period of time in a carbonconstrained worldle if the plan works and survives legal challenges, will that put an end to the effort of the california and the northeast states plan to deal with it through a marketbased system . Yes, it will. Just kidding. Seeing if you were paying attention. [laughter] remember this is about new sources. New, new, new. Just about sending a message to the industry about what the latest technologies are and how we expect them to reduce act. Fpblgt as i indicated, an information will be available today, were really gearing up to start working with state and local communities and the business communities to begin to take a look at how we address the existing standard and the existing standard under the Clean Air Act is very different than the new source standards. These shouldnt indicate that we think we can retrofit existing facilities by plunking Carbon Capture sequestration on the end. Carbon capture sequestration is really being designed into these facilities, which is why its very appropriate to look at this technology in new facilities, which is why i dont want you to look at this proposal and say, ah, i know what e. P. A.