The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to halt President Barack Obama’s plan for cutting power-plant emissions may hobble one of his signature environmental efforts.
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The coal industry sees the Supreme Court decision as a surprise victory.
Announced in its final form last August, the Clean Power Plan aims to reduce heat-trapping carbon pollution from power plants, which the EPA says generate 32 percent of total carbon emissions.
“The supreme court has never issued a stay on a rule that hasn’t been ruled on by a lower court”.
The Clean Power Plan was supposed to be a big win for environmentalists and the Obama Administration.
Timing is a factor, however, as a Supreme Court ruling is not likely before Obama leaves office in January 2017.
Read the order here. The plan calls for a decrease in carbon emissions by 2030, and many states have already begun forming compliance plans to send to the Environmental Protection Agency ahead of the regulations’ implementation.
But Obama also said that the case showed that the struggle over climate policy was alive and well.
“Trying to play ping pong with the Clean Power Plan isn’t doing anyone, any good including those families that are now dependent on the coal economy”, Price said.
The long-term extension of the tax credits for renewable energy a year ago will continue to provide momentum that will transition the power sector toward cleaner sources of energy, Schultz said. Hickenlooper believes he should have the authority in deciding whether the state sues over the Clean Power Plan.
If the court ruled against the administration on that part while upholding the agency’s broad authority to regulate emissions, the Clean Power Plan could survive in a modified form.
“The whole point of the stay was to stop us from having to provide any implementation plan”, Paxton says, “and so we’re not moving forward with anything until this case is resolved”.
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A senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday night that despite the court’s “procedural decision”, the United States can deliver those commitments and take “new and additional steps” to lead internationally on climate change.
