Washington (Platts)--27Feb2013/450 pm EST/2150 GMT

President Barack Obama's top energy adviser on Thursday declined to commit to having the Environmental Protection Agency institute greenhouse-gas regulations on existing power plants, saying the administration has many tools to tackle climate change.

The EPA still has to finalize its rules for new power plants, after receiving more than 2 million comments on its proposed regulation, said Heather Zichal, Obama's deputy assistant for energy and climate change.

"We can't put the cart before the horse," said Zichal, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "EPA is going to spend its time focusing on the review process there. We have to remember that even the standards for new ... power plants is something never done before. It's going to shape the future of the power sector. It's not an insignificant undertaking."

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But she said the White House and its Cabinet agencies still have other means of using their authorities to cut US GHG emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, as the US committed to during UN climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

Those include pushing further aggressive energy efficiency standards, investing in clean-energy research and permitting renewable projects on federal land, Zichal said.

"It would be wrong to fall into the trap that one tool is going to get us to the 17% target," she said. "It's true that EPA and its authority are a bright shiny object, but it's important we move forward many initiatives we started in the first term."

She added: "This administration has demonstrated time and time again our ability to think creatively about our authorities and use them."

Obama will lay out more of his climate and energy plans "in the weeks and months ahead," as he builds on his urgent calls for action in his February 12 State of the Union address, Zichal said.

In that address, the first of his second term as president, Obama pressed Congress to pass a "bipartisan, market-based" cap-and-trade bill, but warned that if Congress fails to act, he would direct his cabinet to identify executive actions he could take.

Many environmental groups had taken that to mean Obama would soon call on EPA to regulate GHGs from existing power plants.

Zichal said Obama would seek to make the production tax credit for renewable energy permanent. The administration will also be finalizing its fracking fluid disclosure regulations, she added.

The prospect of expanded LNG exports is an opportunity to create jobs, but the White House wants to ensure that consumers are not harmed, Zichal said. The US Department of Energy is reviewing whether to allow further LNG exports to countries that do not have free-trade agreements with the US.

"As a general rule of thumb, we are not opposed to the notion of exports," she said. "That's through the lens of making sure we are not doing that in a manner that will undermine American consumers."

Committing to energy efficiency and clean energy is vital, given that the US is still vulnerable to global disruptions in energy supply, even as domestic oil and gas production has boomed, Zichal said.

"As rising [gasoline] prices remind us, we are still reliant on oil," she said. "Some will say we can solve our problems if the administration will just drill more at home. That misses the fact that oil output is at a 15 year high and we are on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the highest oil producer in the world by 2020. Instead of fighting about things we can't control, let's focus on things we can."

--Herman Wang, herman_wang@platts.com
--Edited by Richard Rubin, richard_rubin@platts.com

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