The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan can provide much-needed flexibility for America’s electric cooperatives, the not-for-profit utilities that power 56 percent of the nation’s landscape.

Now the EPA, informed by public comment, must work to develop a common-sense replacement plan. The preferred approach is for the agency to write a replacement rule that focuses on improvements that can be achieved by a variety of possible measures at individual power plants. This “inside the fence” approach would comply with decades of policy precedent, result in greater regulatory certainty for electric cooperatives and other energy providers, and reduce the likelihood of protracted litigation.