NYT: Obama to move forward with CO2 limits on existing power plants

The Obama administration will proceed with regulations that limit emissions of carbon dioxide from existing electric power plants, according to an article in the June 19 edition of the New York Times.

The piece by veteran reporter John Broder says that the Environmental Protection Agency will begin the process of drafting the complex rules this year.

Broder's article quotes unnamed "senior officials" of the administration.

The path to regulation of such greenhouse gas emissions has been open since 2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that EPA must regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Emissions from existing electric power plants account for at least one-third of America's greenhouse gas pollution of the atmosphere, according to EPA.

The question whether, and how, to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants is entirely separate from the issue of regulating emissions from new power plants. The administration proposed such rules in 2012 but missed an April 13 deadline to finalize them.

Obama himself has repeatedly signaled an intention to take executive action on measures aimed at mitigating climate change. In Germany on Wednesday he said the nation has a "moral imperative" to combat the phenomenon, calling it the "global threat of our time."