Utah is among two dozen states across the country mounting a legal challenge to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan regulation, asserting the rule is illegal because it goes beyond the government’s authority.
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“This plan also will burden New Jersey residents with higher electricity costs, and it infringes on the state’s own authority to oversee its energy future, ” said New Jersey governor Chris Christie in a statement released Friday announcing the lawsuit. Instead, it seeks to impose a heavy-handed “solution” that will likely dismantle decades of carefully managed, localized energy regulation. And it’s illegal because it requires states to regulate coal-fired plants under the Clean Air Act, even though the EPA is already doing it. It’s double regulation and prohibited under the act.
NEW YORK (AP) – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a book deal.
“It might be well-intentioned, but with the example of the Clean Power Plan, it’s clear that there could be a few potential real-world impacts”, Greg Dotson, vice president for Energy Policy at Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress.
The Joint Minerals committee shot down a draft bill Friday that would have required legislative approval for state agencies to comply with the Obama administration’s signature climate change law.
But as significant and far-reaching as the Clean Power Plan can be for front-line communities, the plan’s promise is not certain.
The first electric utility in line at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where challenges to EPA rules get filed, was Florida’s non-profit Seminole Electric Cooperative.
However, Ayotte faces a tough re-election bid for her Senate seat against New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D).
Ayotte stood behind her vote, and said taking highway funds away from New Hampshire isn’t the right approach. The EPA says steps like these will spread the CPP’s benefits “broadly across society”, including avoiding as many as 6,600 premature deaths and 150,000 child asthma attacks.
Ayotte came out in support of the plan now because it was recently finalized, she said.
She’s not sure whether her support will prompt other Republicans to back the plan.
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Under a rate-based approach, Utah’s final target it has to achieve by 2030 is a reduction of 37 percent from 2012 emission levels, or a reduction of 1,179 pounds of emissions per megawatt hour of electricity generated. “Opponents are hoping they can knock the legs out from worldwide action by knocking the legs out from United States action”, said David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
