“This week the Supreme Court halted implementation of EPA’s Clean Power Plan”.
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“The immediate effect of the ruling is to push back the deadline for our states to submit implementation plans, but this delay does not necessarily imperil the United States’ meeting its 2030 target”, said Scott Fulton, president of the Environmental Law Institute. The states, joined by a coalition of business groups, then sought a stay from the Supreme Court.
If the rules are allowed to stand, the states said, the “EPA would no longer be an environmental regulator but rather the nation’s central planning authority” – which they argued is an illegal overreach of the agency’s authority and an unconstitutional intrusion on states’ rights.
Varner says Tomblin is pleased with the stay. It’s a rule that would require the states to meet specific carbon emission reduction standards depending on their energy consumption. Atlantic Council senior fellow Heather Zichal, a former climate-policy adviser for the Obama administration, said she’s confident the court ultimately will uphold the plan.
But environmentalists and academic experts are more nervous. Hydro and nuclear plants generate virtually no carbon emissions and, combined with limited solar and wind generation, will soon deliver more than half of all of TVA’s power generation. Coal-dependent power utilities and 27 Republican governors sued to stop the program. Whichever side loses at the appeals level is nearly certain to petition for review by the high court, nearly certainly freezing any significant action on the plan’s goals until after Obama’s term expires in January 2017. “We continue to believe that the Clean Power Plan could negatively impact reliability and affordability of electricity in the state of Georgia and are pleased with the court’s decision”.
Fighting climate change is critical to the president’s legacy as he completes his final year in office. Climate change now joins immigration atop the list of top Obama priorities delayed indefinitely by the courts.
The implications of the Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan will become increasingly apparent over the next several months.
Legal wrangling over a signature Obama administration climate change rule won’t upend the Paris climate agreement, according to activists. The justices may be sending the president a message about his expansive use of executive authority. And this country will finish what our leaders have begun.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court last week gift wrapped a new excuse.
The U.S. committed in Paris to reduce its overall emissions of greenhouse gases by up to 28 percent by the year 2025. But the Clean Power Plan makes coal consumption for power generation so prohibitively hard that it would essentially wipe out the last remnants of the industry in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, told the New York Times: “If the US Supreme Court actually declares the coal power plant rules stillborn, the chances of nurturing trust between countries would all but vanish”.
The stay lets states off the hook until the Supreme Court has its say on the plan.
Morrisey said for him, opposition to the emissions limits has “nothing to do with climate change”.
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“DEP is still preparing a plan to present to EPA once the legal issues are resolved”, said Neil Shader, a spokesman for the department. “Existing environmental regulations, such as MATS [Mercury and Air Toxics Standard] and Regional Haze, coupled with the current low natural gas price environment, are already resulting in decreased dispatch of older, less efficient and higher emitting power facilities”.
