Top Republicans on a House committee want Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy to tell them why her agency seems to be implementing the Clean Power Plan although the Supreme Court has blocked it.
In a letter to McCarthy Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Republican Reps. Ed Whitfield and Tim Murphy, of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, respectively, questioned why the EPA sent the proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program to the Office of Management and Budget for review.
The Clean Energy Incentive Program is part of the Clean Power Plan, which was blocked by the Supreme Court pending a legal challenge. The program allows the EPA to make allowances to states to reward them for investing in wind and solar energy projects. The EPA also is moving forward with some compliance deadlines, despite the stay.
“The agency’s decision to move forward with a shadow regulatory structure to implement the Clean Power Plan presents several obvious concerns,” the letter states.
The Supreme Court blocked the Obama administration’s regulations on new and existing power plants while a lawsuit regarding the case is heard in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thirty states and a number of interest groups and companies are suing the EPA to block the rule.
McCarthy told the committee in March the agency stopped implementing the rule but would move forward with states that want to comply. The Republicans said it’s clear to them now that didn’t mean that the agency wouldn’t continue acting on important parts of the plan.
“EPA has been expending resources on several regulatory processes that are integrally related to the suspended rule and that would compel states and regulated entities in turn to expend resources to respond to these proceedings — or otherwise forego legal rights — and, indirectly, participate in implementation of the stayed rule,” the letter says.
The letter asks McCarthy for the agency’s legal basis in proceeding with the Clean Energy Incentive Program, what law allows the EPA to move forward with the Clean Power Plan despite the stay, any legal analysis the agency has done showing that what it’s doing is not against the law and what resources have been spent since the Supreme Court’s decision.
In a statement, the EPA said it is reviewing and responding to the letter. Some states and tribes want to move forward with implementing the Clean Power Plan and the EPA is working with them, the agency said.
Sending the Clean Energy Incentive Program to the Office of Management and Budget for review was a routine step, the agency said.
“It is consistent with the Supreme Court stay of the Clean Power Plan,” the EPA said. “The proposal is informed by an extensive public outreach and engagement process that began late last year and has included engagement with hundreds of interested stakeholders.”
