The Supreme Court said Friday it would take up a case brought by Republican states and coal companies to determine the extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate the greenhouse gases emitted by power plants.
The court consolidated four separate petitions, led by West Virginia, North Dakota, Westmoreland Mining Holdings, and the North American Coal Corporation, to address the question of whether the EPA has the authority to promulgate regulations enforcing nationwide “performance standards,” provided for in the Clean Air Act, at a generation-sector-wide level.
A second question the court will address, as posed by the Westmoreland petition, is whether the Clean Air Act “clearly authorizes EPA to decide such matters of vast economic and political significance as whether and how to restructure the nation’s energy system.”
The parties filed their petitions in response to a decision the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit delivered in January that blocked the Affordable Clean Energy rule, the Trump administration’s rule for regulating greenhouse gas emissions for power plants that also repealed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
In its petition, which was joined by 18 other states, West Virginia argued that in overturning the Trump-era ACE rule, the appeals court “held that a rarely used, ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act grants an agency unbridled power — functionally ‘no limits’ — to decide whether and how to decarbonize almost any sector of the economy.”
That provision, in part, allows the EPA administrator “to prescribe a plan for a State in cases where the State fails to submit a satisfactory plan” outlining performance standards related to limiting air pollutants.
The Clean Power Plan’s expansive reading of that provision violated the intent of the Clean Air Act and infringed on state sovereignty, West Virginia’s petition argued, warning that the appeals court decision sets the stage for a return to the Obama-era plan’s regulatory scope.
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The petitioners praised the court’s decision, with West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey framing it as a way of hedging off the “insurmountable costs” of President Joe Biden’s proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Biden administration argued in opposition that the “Court’s review therefore should await the completion of EPA’s new rulemaking” when any challenge to the new rule “will take a more concrete shape.”
Power plant carbon pollution hurts families and communities, and threatens businesses and workers. The Courts have repeatedly upheld EPA’s authority to regulate dangerous power plant carbon pollution.
— Michael Regan, U.S. EPA (@EPAMichaelRegan) October 29, 2021
EPA administrator Michael Regan said that the courts “have repeatedly upheld EPA’s authority to regulate dangerous power plant carbon pollution.”
