The National Association of Manufacturers has filed a motion for a stay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday seeking to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. (Motion available here.)

The NAM’s action is supported by a broad coalition of groups representing business, industry, energy and agriculture. (Listed here as the “movants” in the NAM’s statement of issues  filed with the court).

NAM President John Engler makes the economic case in a news release from the NAM:

If the EPA moves forward and begins regulating stationary sources, it will open the door for the Agency to regulate everything from industrial facilities to farms to even American homes. Such a move would further complicate a permitting process the EPA is not equipped to handle, while increasing costs to the manufacturing sector. Further, the EPA has not done any required analysis of the impact of these rules, and its actions will harm our economic recovery at a time when we desperately need jobs.”

Our nation continues to face an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. If the EPA is allowed to continue forward with an overreaching agenda that puts additional and unnecessary burdens on manufacturers and drives up energy costs, it will cause economic harm and instill even more uncertainty into our already fragile economy.  These actions will destroy jobs.

The NAM’s action comes in response to proposed EPA regulations generally known as the Tailpipe Rule, the PSD Interpretive Rule (i.e., the Prevention of Significant Deterioration rule, also known as the Johnson Memo), and the Tailoring Rule.

The NAM’s motion for the stay frames the case this way:

In less than four months, a patchwork of EPA actions related to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will become effective. Together, those Clean Air Act (CAA) actions—the first GHG mandates in the United States—will irreparably harm Movants and damage all sectors of the economy. EPA itself has called the consequences of its actions “absurd,” affecting 6.1 million sources, introducing $78 billion in annual costs, causing “at least a decade or longer” of permit delays, “slow[ing] construction nationwide for years,” introducing burdens that are administratively “infeasible,” “overwhelming,” and will “adversely affect national economic development,” while impacting sources “not appropriate at this point to even consider regulating.” (continue reading…)

Today the Environmental Protection Agency took another step toward regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources under the Clean Air Act. Administrator Lisa Jackson issued a final decision on the so-called Johnson Memo, which outlines when EPA’s controls on greenhouse gas emissions will actually take effect.  Although the decision states that new regulations will become effective no sooner than January 2011, EPA is clearly preparing to regulate GHG emissions from industrial facilities. According to EPA, “construction and operating permit requirements for the largest emitting facilities will begin when the first national rule controlling GHGs takes effect.” EPA further states that if “finalized as proposed,’’ the tailpipe rule for cars and trucks “would trigger these requirements in January 2011.” This is the earliest date on which vehicles complying with the new emission standards can be sold in the American market, which EPA has argued will “trigger” requirements on industrial facilities.

EPA’s action today not only paves the way for regulating stationary sources but also underscores the uncertainty and complexity of implementing a federal climate policy under the Clean Air Act. Not only is EPA delaying final release of the “tailoring rule” for industrial sources — a rule that regulators have been planning to release by March 31 — but it is also delaying the effective date “until at least January 2012.” (EPA Fact Sheet)

Federal regulators are still attempting to sort through the complexity of regulating industrial sources; in today’s statement, EPA says it will release details surrounding the tailoring rule “later this spring.” In addition, a White House review conducted by the Office of Management and Budget is a prerequisite for finalizing a regulation. If there’s any certainty at all in this complex process, it is that federal agencies are not backing down from their agenda to expand the scope of their regulatory powers.