Sponsors (22)
The bill reduces regulatory uncertainty and lowers costs for facility owners by narrowing when changes trigger 'modification' rules, but at the cost of potentially higher short-term and cumulative emissions, weakened local air-quality protections, and greater enforcement burdens on states and communities.
Owners/operators of major and existing industrial facilities (utilities, energy companies, small industrial owners) get clearer, locked-in rules about when physical or operational changes trigger New Source Performance Standards or 'modification' determinations, reducing regulatory uncertainty for planning and permitting.
Facilities that make changes without increasing annual actual emissions avoid being treated as new construction or facing additional permitting, lowering compliance costs and reducing permitting delays for plant upgrades, maintenance, or reliability projects.
Owners/operators are encouraged to implement efficiency-improving changes because reductions in emissions per unit of production are explicitly not treated as 'modifications', which can make efficiency upgrades less likely to trigger new controls.
Nearby communities (urban and rural residents, hospitals) may face higher short-term or cumulative pollution because narrower 'modification' rules can let emission-increasing changes escape review, weakening local public health protections.
Facilities could avoid installing modern pollution controls and lose incentives to adopt cleaner technologies when changes aren't treated as 'modifications', potentially increasing cumulative emissions and slowing emissions reductions.
Some facility changes that raise short-term or localized emissions (but not annual totals) may evade Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) review, limiting EPA and state opportunities to require best-available controls and harming local air quality.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Narrows the Clean Air Act "modification" definition so only changes that raise the post-change maximum hourly emission rate above any hourly rate in the prior 10 years (and excludes certain reliability or per-unit reduction changes) trigger NSR/PSD.
Changes the Clean Air Act definition of a “modification” for stationary sources so that routine changes that do not raise the post-change maximum hourly emission rate above any hourly rate in the prior 10 years are not treated as increases. It also excludes from being a modification changes that reduce emissions per unit of production or that restore, maintain, or improve reliability or safety, and aligns related Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and State Implementation Plan (SIP) language with that definition. Finally, it states that the Act should not be read to convert any change into a modification if that change would not have been considered a modification before enactment.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by H. Morgan Griffith · Last progress January 3, 2025