On Tuesday, the Supreme Court chose to stay the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s push to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants, while an appeals court considers a challenge to the rule.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has put on hold President Obama’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants.
The US Supreme Court placed a temporary halt on a wide-reaching plan to curb carbon emissions from power plants, in a major setback to the Obama administration’s plan to shift the US to clean energy.
Among the states that led the anti-Clean Power Plan coalition were coal producer West Virginia and oil producer Texas.
Before that, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which denied a similar stay request last month, will hear oral arguments in the case on June 2 and decide whether the regulations are lawful.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the high court’s action a “great victory”.
The rule, Obama’s most ambitious effort to combat climate change, allows states to achieve the reductions however they see fit.
“Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is pleased that the court will stop implementation of the new rules until legality is determined”, spokesman Chris Stadelman told The Register-Herald. The Environmental Defense Fund, which is a party in the case, described its decision Tuesday as “highly unusual”. “I applaud Attorney General Doug Peterson’s continued work to defend Nebraska against EPA overreach”, the governor said in a written statement released by his office.
The rule is created to reduce the U.S.’s carbon emissions in an effort to slow global climate change.
The court’s four liberal justices said they would have denied the request.
Even if the rule is ultimately upheld, the Supreme Court’s stay on implementation of the rule could significantly impact compliance timelines for states and utilities. The plan would impose carbon dioxide emissions limits on existing power plants. The Obama administration and environmental groups also say the plan will spur new clean-energy jobs. States were supposed to submit plans detailing how they would meet emission goals to the EPA by September, or seek a two-year extension.
Environmental groups also expressed their support for taking further action against climate change following the court’s ruling.
“The plan is fully consistent with the Clean Air Act, and relies on the same time-tested state-federal partnership that, since 1970, has reduced harmful air pollution by 70 percent, while the USA economy has tripled”, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote in an October blog post.
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The Court’s order all but guarantees that the legal fight over the plan will outlast the Obama administration itself.
