myers and work to the end to ellen nowak. you're recognized. >> thank you chairman inhofe ranking member boxer and the committee for inviting me here to testify. i'm michael myers. my perspective is slightly different from those of other members of the panel. as an environmental lawyer i've worked for the past 15 years at the attorney general's office counselling state regulators on legal issues related to air pollution and climate change and litigating those issues in the courts. it's particularly appropriate that the committee should seek to hear state perspectives because under the provision of the clean air act section 111-d states are in the driver's seat. but for us to succeed in this critically important area, each state has to be willing to take the wheel. from the perspective of state new york that's already taken action to cut power plant greenhouse gas emissions i have good news for other states. you can significantly reduce these emissions from the power sector and do so in a way that helps grow your economy. new

i am ellen nowak. i am the chairperson for the public service commission of wisconsin. last fall i was intimately with the construction of the comments the state of wisconsin submitted to the epa, and i submitted those comments together with my written testimony for the record. wisconsin is a manufacturing heavy state with industrial customers representing over one third of sales and over 60% of our state's power generation comes from coal. if the problems in the clean power plan are not remedied, the work wisconsin has done to restore a manufacturing sector will be threatened. as a regulator, i also remain concerned about the reliability of the grid, considering the fast shift in energy production -- reduction required by this proposal. with that background and because of the far-reaching impacts of the epa's clean power plan, we brought together an interdisciplinary team. this team consisted of public service commission experts and utility rate modeling, economics, environmental regulation, and engineering, along with department of natural resources experts in environ