Opinion ID: 185450
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: State Petitioners

Text: 33 State Petitioners echo many of the arguments addressed above. Their claims are unique insofar as they object to the EPA's imposition of erroneous projections of their economic growth on states through the NOx SIP Call. Joint Brief of Petitioning States at 4. The State Petitioners' primary complaint is with the EPA's reliance upon the IPM to generate state-by-state growth rates without promulgating a mechanism to review these projections based upon actual growth rates. Petitioning states contend that the EPA's projections underestimate actual growth in some affected states, but the EPA refused to address this concern in the TA rulemaking. While the EPA acknowledged some inconsistency between IPM growth projections and those provided by individual states, the EPA rejected the claim that the states' projections are inherently more reliable. State Petitioners claim that it was unreasonable for the EPA to reach this conclusion without conducting any analysis of the state projections. 34 State Petitioners aver that deference to the EPA's findings in this area is unwarranted because deference is only due within an agency's area of expertise. See NRDC v. EPA, 194 F.3d 130, 136 (D.C. Cir. 1999). Were the EPA making environmental projections, they concede, deference would be warranted. Since, however, the growth projections are essentially economic projections, this Court should give the EPA no more deference than it would to the agency's predictions of 2007 interest rates or the level of the Dow Jones Index. Joint Brief of Petitioning States at 10 (citing Montana v. EPA, 137 F.3d 1135, 1141 (9th Cir. 1998)). While the EPA has authority to impose emission limits on states, they argue, it does not have the authority to regulate a state's economic growth. Insofar as the EPA has done this through its growth projections, it has adopted an overly broad reading of the CAA that usurps States' sovereign power to manage their own economic growth. Id. at 12. 35 The EPA raises the same untimeliness arguments discussed above. See infra Part II.A.1-2. We reject them for the same reasons. However, insofar as the State Petitioners seek relief beyond that which is provided above, their complaints are not well taken. The EPA has sufficient discretion to use the IPM model in the first instance even if states believe that some other state-specific modeling is more accurate. When it comes to these sorts of technical matters, the EPA is entitled to great deference. See Environmental Action, Inc. v. FERC, 939 F.2d 1057, 1064 (D.C. Cir. 1991) ([I]t is within the scope of the agency's expertise to make such a prediction about the market it regulates, and a reasonable prediction deserves our deference notwithstanding that there might also be another reasonable view.). [I]t is only when the model bears no rational relationship to the characteristics of the data to which it is applied that we will hold that the use of the model was arbitrary and capricious. Appalachian Power Co. v. EPA, 135 F.3d 791, 802 (D.C. Cir. 1998). 36 That the EPA's projections depend, in large part, on economic projections, rather than environmental factors, makes little difference. Appalachian Power Co. v. EPA, 249 F.3d 1032, 1053 (D.C.Cir.2001). Congress has delegated to the EPA the power to set emissions limits under the Clean Air Act. Merely because this requires the selection and utilization of complex computer models to forecast future emissions does not change the standard with which we evaluate the agency's actions, so long as the agency's actions are, as here, confined to those technical issues that must be resolved for the agency intelligently to address the matters over which Congress has given it authority. See generally id.; Small Refiner Lead Phase-Down Task Force v. EPA, 705 F.2d 506, 535 (D.C. Cir. 1983). State Petitioners' hyperbolic suggestion that the EPA's choice of industry forecasting models is tantamount to stock market forecasting is simply absurd. 37 Similarly, that the EPA's selection of a computer model and forecasting methodology results in the imposition of emission controls on states that crimp economic growth does not change the underlying analysis. In Michigan, this Court squarely upheld the EPA's authority to establish statespecific NOx budgets against a claim that such authority impermissibly intrudes on the statutory rights of states to select their own emission control policies in the first instance. Michigan v. EPA, 213 F.3d 663, 686-87 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Acknowledging this point, State Petitioners seek to argue that the Michigan holding somehow left open the claim that the EPA's authority to set state emission budgets did not entail authority to make the state-specific growth projections upon which such emission budgets are inevitably based. This is a distinction without a meaningful difference. Given the regulatory structure created by the Clean Air Act, the former authority clearly encompasses the latter, notwithstanding State Petitioners' veiled appeals to federalism principles. 38 For these reasons, we hold that State Petitioners are not entitled to any relief beyond that which is entailed by remanding the growth factor determinations for further proceedings in response to Industry Petitioners' claims.