By a vote of 6 to 3, the Supreme Court decided to limit the federal government’s powers to control emissions from power plants.
According to the ruling, it is forbidden for federal agencies to make “major” decisions without express consent from Congress.
It appears to permit restrictions that are strictly aimed at limiting smokestack pollution, but it prohibits more expansive regulations that set state-by-state emission reduction objectives that would hasten the transition to clean energy.
It stops the Biden administration from implementing the broad emissions regulations that the EPA tried to put in place during the Obama administration. Obama’s Clean Power Plan was suspended by the Supreme Court in 2016, therefore it never went into action.
In West Virginia v. EPA, the appeals court’s decision to overturn the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, a Trump-era regulation that essentially killed the Clean Power Plan, the court sided with coal power facilities and GOP-led states.
Despite the fact that the Clean Power Plan was never implemented, the utility industry succeeded in reducing carbon pollution by 32 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030.
The Biden administration had requested the Supreme Court to postpone interfering in favor of writing a new regulation.
The Supreme Court decided against deciding on an existing rule and instead established a precedent for Biden’s future rule, which was anticipated to be in line with his objective of having the entire U.S. power grid run on sustainable energy by 2035.
The EPA can still control greenhouse gases at the source under Section 111 and more generally through other Clean Air Act provisions, but it’s a terrible and unneeded decision.
Following this decision, the EPA must make the most of its remaining power, according to a statement from Jason Rylander of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which gives the agency the authority to establish “standards of performance” for air pollutants, provided the foundation for the debate about the EPA’s level of authority.
After the Massachusetts v. EPA ruling in 2007, when the court decided that greenhouse gases could be controlled as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the court made its most significant climate case decision on Thursday.
President Obama at the time wanted to fight climate change by regulating power plants, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the transportation sector, in an effort to break the impasse in Congress.
Some legal experts were concerned that the lawsuit would upend a significant portion of the regulatory state because Biden’s agencies are currently defending wetlands protections, restrictions on vehicle emissions, and insurance coverage for contraception in court.