What's Regan Going to Do and How Is He Going to Do It?

president might pick to lead the EPA. Stephen throughout a few names back then, like California air regulator Mary Nichols or Washington State governor Jay Insley, but as it turned out, Biden went with none of those people and instead tapped Michael Reagan, an environmental regulator from North Carolina. So Stephen's crystal ball was perhaps not so clear, but now he's more than made up for it by scoring an exclusive

interview with Reagan himself. Yesterday, Reagan chatted with Stephen and our Bloomberg News colleague En Delouis about what he wants to accomplish as the head of the EPA and how he's going to accomplish it. So this morning, I got Stephen on the line to get a better sense of where the EPA may be headed under its new boss, and just who Michael Reagan actually is. Michael Reagan has

been doing environmental policy work for a long time. He is a forty four year old fellow from Goldsboro, North Carolina. He went to North Carolina A and T State, which is an HBCU, and he then went to work at the EPA on air quality during the Clinton years. And from there he went to the Environmental Defense Fund, which

is a major advocacy group. He was operating at a high level and making a name for himself, and then in twenty seventeen he got a big job, which was the secretary of the North Carolina Apartment of Environmental Quality. And while he was there, he scored some big wins, including a settlement with Duke Energy that required them to clean up eighty million tons of coal ash, which is

the biggest coal ash clean up in US history. So by that point he had pretty firmly established himself as a guy with a lot of experience and strong credentials, and that's when President Biden nominated him to be the head of the EPA. Now that said, I do kind of want to put you on blast here, Stephen, because you came on this podcast right after Biden was elected and we talked about the shortlist for who he would appoint as the EPA head, and Michael Reagan was not

on that shortlist. So what happened? I thought it was going to be you know, Mary Nichols or Jay Insley. You know, where did Reagan come? He was? He seemed like a you know, out of the blue. You know, you're right. I think it it took a lot of

people by surprise. It took me by surprise. He was, as I say, he was a guy who had a lot of credentials, but he was not a guy who was sort of, you know, nationally known and at least my expectation was that Biden was going to name someone at the EPA who was sort of a name brand person or at least in the environmental world, which I think Michael Reagan was to some extent. But it was a surprise in Mary Nichols, as you say, she was considered to be the front runner for quite a while.

And then in Reagan's case, I think it helps that he has been so active on environmental Justice throughout his career. That's been a really big focus of his He is African American, and so I feel like that was one of the sort of criteria that Biden was really thinking about when he was when he was trying to pick someone to lead DPA. So you and Jenna Lewis spoke

with him yesterday. Tell me what he was like. You know, I had the opportunity to interview his predecessor, Andrew Wheeler a few times times, and you know, he was actually pretty approachable, but could get a little icy if you asked a question he didn't like. What's Reagan like? What's his temperament? He strikes me as a nice guy. You know. One of the first things that people always say about

Michael Reagan is that he is a consensus builder. He listens to everyone, He can bring people together, and you really sense that when you talk to him. You know, he comes across as just a very friendly, kind of affable guy. He's got a really calm way about him that I think is appealing to people on both sides

of the aisle. And you saw some of that on display in his Senate confirmation hearing when he really kind of charmed the lawmakers, I think even some of the ones who were ideologically dead set against him, and I look forward and look forward to having conversations with you,

your staff and others on how we get there. I appreciate that, and I think you're not going to have a lot of good discussions, quite honestly, and I'm grateful for your sentiments I was thinking about specifically, and probably in a around or maybe even over coffee sometime, we'll talk more about things like not a bomb thrower. No, he which is not to say that he's not tough, because he has been tough on industry in the past.

But you know, David, I think, to me, this is one of the interesting dynamics that we're going to see play out. We're sort of in this honeymoon period right now where Democrats and environmentalists are really excited about having this, you know, young, dynamic, smart guy at the head of the EPA, and he hasn't been scuffed up yet by Republicans in Congress or by big business because he just started the job. But there will come a time, for

sure when that will happen. And and there will also surely be times when he will disappoint environmentalists by not going far enough. And of course that's always a critical turning point. You know, once a person gets scuffed up a little, does that change the way that people view him or her or does it limit his or her ability to get things done. So let's talk about your discussion and what his to do list was. It sounded like he really wanted to talk about infrastructure and the

recently released by an infrastructure plan. But one of the most significant things that he told you that you and Jen wrote about was that it sounds like he's ready to take pretty significant action on automobiles and auto emissions. What what's he getting ready to do? Yeah, Reagan said, the administration is on track to propose new limits on

auto emissions by the end of July. So right now, the EPA is in the process of rewriting a rule that was put out during the Trump era that that weakened limits on auto emissions through the twenty twenty six model year. And so to change that, the EPA is going to have to do a new rulemaking and so that'll take time and there'll be a lot of back and forth with the auto industry. We don't know what

the proposed rule is going to look like. But just to provide a little bit of context, under Obama, the EPA required new cars to reach fifty four miles per gallon by twenty twenty six model year, and then Trump lowered it to around forty miles per gallon. So now if Biden wants to put the US on a path to a net zero economy by twenty fifty, which is what they've said, they're going to have to not only claw back the Obama targets, but probably outdo them. And

that is going to be the challenge. Yeah, that is interesting to see whether he'll just go back to what the status quo was or to get even more aggressive. The other angle here with auto emissions is California, which makes everything more complicated for those listeners who don't know. California has an exemption that or had an exemption that allows them to set their own auto emission standards just for their state, and during the Obama administration, California and

the federal government agreed to just do one number. During the Trump administration, that agreement broke apart and there was extremely acrimonious Where does Reagan stand on this? Does he want to give power back? To California to do its own thing. What he has said is that he is going to look closely at the EPA statutory authority. Of course, they believe that they do have the authority to do this.

You know, it's also interesting that he didn't explicitly rule out the possibility of emissions rules from the EPA that are so tough that they basically ban gas powered cars. And going back to California, you know, Governor Gavin Newsom, i think it was last year, said that sales of new gas powered cars are going to be outright banned

by twenty thirty five. So Reagan isn't talking about that kind of thing, but he did leave the door open at least as as that's what I heard to you know, really tough rules that would make it, you know, just very expensive for automakers to make gas powered cars and for consumers to buy them. So it sounds like the disagreements between the EPA and California are, if not nullified, basically you know, have been swept under the rug. Now that that Reagan is in office, they're they're more or

less on the same page or almost the same page. Well, and you know, the auto industry actually also supports this sort of compromise approach on vehicle emissions that they did strike in California, so they are not totally opposed to making cleaner cars. I think that part of the reason for that is that, you know, they've already spent a lot of money over the years developing more efficient engines. They don't want to see those investments go to waste.

I think there's also part of it that they don't like the bad publicity that goes with rolling back emission standards. So this is really a case where I think Reagan's consensus building skills are going to be put to the test.

I'm glad you brought up the auto industry here, because you know, this was a weird dynamic during the Trump administration and now it's still playing out that the auto industry wasn't totally on board with rolling back the emission standards, and now it seems like they're okay with, you know,

tightening them again. Do you think that's one of the reasons why Reagan made this or is really making this one of the first things he's gonna do, is because there's not a huge industry pushed back here as opposed to some other environmental you know agenda items where he would get really really strong pushed back from the private sector. Well, he is a pretty strategic guy, so I'm sure they are gaming out, you know, where can we score some quick wins and where are we likely to have a

lot of trouble. But you know, we also know that this administration is very serious about trying to drive down emissions, and transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the US economy, so it does make sense that he would take aim at that. And it also matches up with Biden's plan in the Infrastructure proposal to spend one hundred and seventy four billion dollars to get people to buy electric vehicles. Okay, and finally I wanted to ask

you about, you know, rollbacks. You know, one of the first things that the Trump administration did when it came into office was rolled back a lot of what the Obama administration did. Now it seems like the Biden administrations

rolling back the rollbacks. Do you think that Reagan's first year in office or maybe beyond, is just going to be spent kind of doing what his predecessor did, or do you think that there are going to be new policies, and he's going to take the EPA in a different direction. It's not just going to be reverting back to the status quo. I have a feeling they're going to have

to do everything. You know, some of the Trump era rules that they want to redo, in addition to auto emissions, would limit methane releases from the oil and gas sector and clamp down on emissions from power plants. That's a

huge one, of course. And then in the category of new policies, I think you could put the Biden Infrastructure proposal, which would spend one hundred billion dollars on clean energy, and forty five billion dollars to replace all the nation's lead pipes, you know, billions to modernize water systems, and on and on. And then another new policy is the

EPA's heavy emphasis on environmental justice. And just today Reagan gave instructions to the agency's employees that basically told them to bulk up their enforcement of environment told violations in frontline and fence line communities. You know, the Biden administration believes that this is we're in a climate emergency, and so they have so much work to do. And I really think that Reagan's managerial and political skills are going

to be tested. That was Bloomberg Law environmental reporter Stephen Lee. And that's it for today's episode of Parts per Billion. If you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment. That's at environment, nothing else E N V I R O N M E N T. I'm at David B. Schultz if you want to congratulate me on being able to spell environment. Today's episode of parsberbillion was produced by myself, David Schultz, with

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