on monday, several outlets smash The story that the Biden administration plans to launch a plan to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. And while the rule is not yet public, if history is any indication, conservative forces are already preparing to sue the EPA.
Last year, the Supreme Court rule in favor from multiple plaintiffs, including two coal companies and a group of Republican attorneys general, in a case challenging the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, another landmark policy intended to regulate emissions from power plants. While the Clean Power Plan never went into effect — it was locked in court challenges for years after it was introduced in 2015 and struck down by the Trump administration — last year’s court case was Symbolically very important In determining what kind of regulations the EPA can place on dirty power plants. (While nearly 300 coal-fired power plants have shut down since 2010, approx 40% of coal generation capacity in the United Statesstill coal-fired power constitutes approximately 60% of US emissions from electricity generation.)
The design of the Biden rule carefully addresses the terms laid out in last year’s ruling. The court last year challenged the Clean Power Plan’s mandates for states to design emissions-reduction schemes — an approach known as “beyond the fence line,” meaning it tried to regulate pollution outside of actual power plants, which the court decided did not align with the original order filed by the Protection Agency. Environment from Congress. The base of the Biden energy plan, according to media reports, appears to deal exclusively with reducing emissions at the power plants themselves, through the broad application of carbon capture and storage technologies to clean up gas and coal-fired power plants.
“The two rules are very different,” Michael Gerrard, founder and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told Earther.
This does not mean that a Biden plan that regulates emissions from power plants will be safe from court challenges — far from it. Conservatives face the court that was Designed specifically to meet their desires, shaped by years of dark money and the behind-the-scenes work of Republican champions with a private vision of ultra-conservative America. This sympathetic court has already scored major victories, such as last year’s EPA ruling and Roe v Wade reversed.
Plus, it’s pretty par for the course of EPA rules to be dragged back and forth to court. “Virtually everything the EPA does is challenged in court,” Gerrard said. “One side sues or the other — sometimes both.”
The real sticking point that competitors are likely to exploit is what’s known as the leading questions doctrine, a legal principle that the Supreme Court reinforced in its ruling last year. The Key Questions doctrine states that if an agency is going to take action of “major” economic or social importance, it needs express authorization from Congress. There can be a whole host of ways to interpret this principle—but since the EPA’s decision was less than a year ago, the court didn’t have much time.
“We don’t know how major a major it is,” Gerrard said. “And we don’t know how clear the direction of Congress should be.” Challengers could argue that points of Biden’s plan — including his reliance on carbon capture and storage technology, which is currently considered too expensive and produce spotty results — fall outside congressional directive to the EPA regarding regulation of power plants.
The Biden administration will deliver its verdict by the end of the week, Politico says mentioned.
“I think it’s very likely that this rule, once introduced, will be challenged in court,” Gerrard said. “I think it’s very likely that there will be key questions that challenge that. I certainly wouldn’t predict how it would turn out.”
(tags to translation) Michael Gerrard