View from the back of the US Supreme Court on June 6, 2022 in Washington, DC. According to media reports,
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The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency to set standards for climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions for existing power plants.
In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said that Congress, not the EPA, has that power.
The court ruling in the case affects the federal government’s power to set standards for global warming pollutants such as carbon dioxide from existing power plants under the remarkable Clean Air Act.
The decision is a major obstacle to the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, in particular the goal of zeroing carbon emissions from power plants by 2035 and halving the country’s emissions by the end of the decade.
The case stems from the EPA’s 2015 directive on coal-fired power plants, either to reduce production or to subsidize alternative forms of energy. This order was never carried out because it was immediately challenged in court.
Fossil fuel power plants are the second largest source of pollution in the United States after transportation, according to the EPA. The United States is also the second largest producer of greenhouse gases after China, making it a key player in global efforts to combat climate change.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the case, known as West Virginia v. The Environmental Protection Agency, which was joined by the other five conservative members of the Supreme Court.
The decision is the first time that the majority has explicitly cited the so-called doctrine of fundamental issues to justify a decision. This contradictory doctrine argues that with matters of great national importance, the regulatory agency must have clear legal permission from Congress to take certain actions, rather than relying on its joint agency.
Roberts wrote: “There is little reason to believe that Congress has commissioned such decisions” on the EPA provisions in question, despite the agency’s conviction that “Congress has implicitly instructed it to balance many vital national policy considerations involved in deciding how Americans will get their energy. “
“Limiting carbon emissions to a level that will force a nationwide transition from using coal to generate electricity may be a sensible solution to the crisis of the day,” Roberts wrote, “but it’s not plausible for Congress to The EPA shall have the right to adopt such a regulatory scheme on its own. “
He added: “A decision of this magnitude and consequences depends on Congress itself or on an agency acting in accordance with a clear delegation from that representative body.”
Judge Elena Kagan wrote a disagreement, which was joined by two other liberals in court.
“Today, the Court is taking away from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the powers that Congress has given it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,'” Kagan wrote in the disagreement.
“The court appoints itself – instead of Congress or the expert agency – as the decision-maker on climate policy. “I can’t think of much worse things,” Kagan wrote.
She also said: “The majority claims that this is just a consequence of precedent, but this is not the case. The court has never even used the term “doctrine of fundamental issues” before. “
A conservative majority of six judges in the court is skeptical of the federal agency’s power to set national standards.
The legal battle for EPA powers began several years ago when the Obama administration set strict carbon limits for each country in a bid to reduce emissions from power plants and called on states to abide by limiting to cleaner energy alternatives such as wind and solar.
The Obama administration’s clean energy plan was temporarily blocked in 2016 by the Supreme Court and then overturned in 2019 by the Trump administration, which claims the plan exceeds the EPA’s powers under the Clean Air Act. He argues that the act only allows the agency to set standards in the physical premises of the power plant – or “inside the fence.”
The Trump administration has proposed lighter standards for regulating emissions only from existing coal-fired power plants, a policy called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. The revision was challenged by states and environmental groups and ultimately rejected by the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Since then, there has been no EPA standard for carbon pollution from existing power plants.
Republican attorneys general, led by West Virginia, a major coal producer, along with coal companies and industry groups, have been pursuing the case, arguing that the EPA has no power to transfer the country to cleaner energy sources and that power belongs to Congress.
Lawyers representing the EPA and lobbying groups in the U.S. utilities sector have rejected arguments limiting the agency’s credibility, arguing that it would lead to lawsuits against electricity suppliers.
Under the Biden administration, the EPA has indicated that it will not try to resurrect the clean energy plan, but rather create its own rules to regulate emissions from the power plant.
But Roberts, according to the majority, wrote: “In essence, the Clean Energy Plan essentially adopted a restriction and trade scheme or a set of state carbon restraint and trade schemes … However, Congress has consistently rejected proposals to amend the clean air to create such a program. “
Thursday’s ruling could rule out the agency’s ability to impose a restriction and trade system that allows the government to maximize the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the industry and penalize countries for violations. The parties then buy and sell the allowances to exceed this limit, essentially creating a market around emissions.
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