The agency can still impose stronger limits on other air pollutants that coal plants produce, which could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions
CLIMATEWIRE | The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday does not strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases. It is unlikely to change how the Biden administration regulates power plant emissions and will do little to boost the fortunes of a coal industry hamstrung by mounting competition from renewables.
The result is a legal twist for American climate policy, one where the ruling has potentially less impact on the issues at stake in West Virginia than on other parts of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. All the legal wrangling is likely to have little impact on Biden’s approach to regulating power plant emissions since he was never likely to follow in his former boss’s footsteps. The Clean Power Plan never went into effect, after the high court’s extraordinary move to stay the rule in 2016. Former President Donald Trump then axed it altogether, eventually replacing it with a watered-down rule of his own.
EPA has several other pathways for regulating coal plants thanks to the history of the Clean Air Act. The law was conceived as an attempt to limit pollutants like particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which coal plants produce en masse. The rapid growth in renewables owes to a combination of federal tax credits and technological improvements that have spurred steep cost declines. It has also rendered the targets in the Clean Power Plan irrelevant.
But yesterday’s court ruling will make it even more difficult to deploy regulations to curb greenhouse gases, analysts said. Agencies will need to demonstrate they have congressional approval to pursue major regulatory changes, making it more difficult to use existing laws for climate purposes.
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