Bellows Calls on Collins to Announce Public Support for Overdue Carbon Regulation, Stand Up to McConnell on Air Quality

Press Release

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Shenna Bellows today called on her opponent, Republican Susan Collins, to support the recently released Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) carbon reduction standard for existing power plants. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has demanded a vote on his proposal to block the standard from going into effect and called Democrats "afraid" to debate the issue. Collins has not indicated whether she will stand up to McConnell.

The proposed EPA standard, as the Washington Post wrote June 2,

would cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal plants by up to to 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, taking aim at one of the nation's leading sources of greenhouse gases. Under the draft rule, the EPA would let states and utilities meet the new standard with different approaches mixing four options including energy efficiency, shifting from coal to natural gas, investing in renewable energy and making power plant upgrades. Other compliance methods could include offering discounts to encourage consumers to shift electricity use to off-peak hours. The rule represents one of the most significant steps the federal government has ever taken to curb the nation's greenhouse gas emissions[.]

At a Wednesday Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the need to combat climate change through smarter regulation, four former Republican EPA heads told lawmakers that "the Obama administration had worked hard to make the proposal flexible and workable, using authority provided by Congress," according to USA Today.

"Republican Susan Collins ought to tell Mitch McConnell and every other climate change denier in Congress that she supports cleaner air, a safer climate and a more sustainable economy," Bellows said. "Rather than hesitate, she should offer the environmental leadership Mainers need and stand for better carbon limits. This is a truly historic time for our environment, and she's letting it pass by without any comment."

Collins, who has a lifetime 67 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters, has opposed stronger clean air standards in the past. In 2011 she introduced the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, which a June 24, 2012, op-ed in the Lewiston Sun-Journal pointed out was "roundly condemned by environmentalists as an attempt to gut EPA regulations intended to clean up the nation's dirtiest industrial power plants -- many of them fueled by biomass, and several right here in Maine. She then tried to attach her legislation to the unrelated transportation bill [in the spring of 2012], an effort that only narrowly failed."

As far back as 2009, Collins led the fight to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in clean energy funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Among other cuts, her plan would have eliminated:

- $4.5 billion in renewable energy loan guarantees at the Department of Energy
- $1.4 billion in research grants and facilities construction at the National Science Foundation
- $1 billion from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at the Department of Energy
- $300 million in laboratory upgrades at the Department of Agriculture

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