The Supreme Court has taken a step toward reining in an out-of-control bureaucratic agency that runs roughshod over existing law and constitutional authority. EPA, for example, the Supreme Court overturned onerous EPA MATS regulations on power plants, but the rules were not suspended while the legal challenges were made. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan remains a crucial tool to ensure that every state must do its part, and to empower them to do so. The Court’s recent decisions had hinted that the Clean Power Plan might meet with disfavor among the justices. “Even while the litigation proceeds, (the Environmental Protection Agency) has indicated it will work with states that choose to continue plan development and will prepare the tools those states will need”.
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Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer representing the coal industry in the legal challenge, said that the provision of the Clean Air Act the EPA is focusing on has only been used previously to set air pollution standards for individual plants. We must keep moving our country beyond coal.
The challengers’ line of attack is a targeted argument that could undercut the plan without requiring it to be struck down altogether.
Compliance with the new emissions rules isn’t required until 2022, but states must submit their detailed plans for meeting the required reductions to the EPA by September or seek an extension.
OH regulators said Wednesday they were not sure how the state will respond to the court decision, but the state’s major utilities are already shifting away from coal. However the court action evidently also shows that much depends on the strategy and success of the plan likely to adopted by incumbent in Obama’s office.
The EPA rules could have led to the closure of as many as 14 coal-fired power plants in Texas.
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Some of the conservative justices have signaled hostility to the EPA in three other Obama administration air pollution regulations in the past three years, including one on climate change. “The inclusion of those tax credits is going to have more impact over the short term than the Clean Power Plan”, added by him.
