Posted on 06/30/22
| News Source: The Hill
The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate climate change, setting limits on how the agency can deal with power plant emissions.
In a 6-3 ruling, the justices determined that Congress did not authorize the EPA to induce a shift toward cleaner energy sources using the approach that an Obama-era regulation sought to.
“Congress did not grant EPA … the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan,” the majority wrote.
The ruling was spurred by an appeal to a decision last year that struck down a Trump-era power plant rule.
In appealing that decision, West Virginia asked the court to consider whether the EPA has the authority to try to push the entire system away from coal and reshape the country’s electric grid.
The Obama administration tried to regulate power plants on a system-wide basis through a combination of both improvements to existing coal plants and a shift away from it toward renewables and natural gas.
But in 2016, the Supreme Court put a temporary halt on that regulation, blocking it from taking effect. it was eventually replaced by a Trump administration rule that only included efficiency improvements for coal plants and no shifts to other energy sources.