By John Broder
The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that it would delay issuance of a new rule limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from new power plants after the electric power industry objected on legal and technical grounds.
The rule, proposed a year ago and scheduled to be finalized on Saturday, would have put in place the first restrictions on climate-altering gases from the power sector in the United States. Agency officials said it would be rewritten to address the concerns raised by the industry, which said that strict new carbon standards could not be met using existing technology.
An E.P.A. spokeswoman said the agency had received more than two million comments on the proposed rule. She would not speculate on when a revised standard would be issued.
“We are continuing to work on the rule,” said Alisha Johnson, the E.P.A. press secretary. “No timetable has been set.”
The draft rule, introduced last March by Lisa P. Jackson, then the E.P.A. administrator, would have limited carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants to 1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour.
Gina McCarthy, the head of the agency’s air and radiation office that wrote the rule, has been tapped to head the E.P.A. Her nomination is currently before the Senate.
Also: Report: Federal ‘clean coal’ power project faces uncertain future
