A few details on Obama's climate agenda

My impression as I watched the President's inaugural speech yesterday was confirmed today by the newspaper of record: Although he touched on several policy issues, the one he stressed most was climate change and environmental protection.  The New York Times article also suggests that the White House must have given reporters some background after the speech on what the President is intending.

The article reports he’ll work through executive powers rather than propose any new legislation.  Republicans, who generally deny any human responsibility for climate change, effectively make any legislative action impossible.  So far, according to the Times, the administration's climate action will have three components.
 
1. New EPA regulations to reduce emissions from existing coal-fired power plants.  The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that effective regulations could reduce these emissions by 25 percent by 2020.
 
2. New regulations to improve energy efficiency in household appliances, prosaic items like refrigerators, dishwashers, washers and dryers.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.  Apparently, during the previous administration, the Department of Energy was not meeting statutory requirements for updating standards.  The DOE was finally forced to act after a court settlement in 2006.  By early last year, the department had issued 17 new or revised standards; it was due to have another 11 completed by now.  We’ll have to see if the administration's plans in this sector refer to these 11 sets of standards, or whether they’ll be going further.
 
3. Department of Defense energy efficiency and use of renewables.  The DOD is among the largest energy consumers in the country.  Greater energy efficiency, of course, means financial savings.  Potentially, the department could also become a model for other federal agencies and the private sector.

This would seem a pretty modest agenda.  There is, for example, no talk of something like a carbon tax.  But even these measures are virtually certain to get congressional Republicans worked up.  They can be expected to look for ways to block the regulations and will probably make it as difficult as they can to name a new EPA director.  And the power plant regulations will probably be challenged in court.