By Abbie Vansickle
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court permitted the Environmental Protection Agency to proceed with its initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions from power plants, marking a win for the Biden administration.
This temporary decision focused on a critical regulation introduced by the administration in April, which aims to eradicate pollution from coal, the fossil fuel that produces the most carbon dioxide.
This action is a part of the Biden administration’s commitment to decrease pollution from these sources by 2050.
Over two dozen states contested this regulation, claiming the federal government failed to demonstrate that the methods for controlling emissions would effectively achieve the targeted reductions.
This ruling, being provisional, responded to an urgent request as challenges progress through lower courts.
The EPA has faced numerous legal hurdles during the Biden administration concerning its environmental protective measures. In June, the Supreme Court temporarily halted an EPA initiative to reduce air pollution that crosses state lines. The agency’s power has also been limited regarding controlling water pollution and addressing climate change factors.
According to the rule, long-term operating coal and gas-fired power plants must capture as much as 90% of their emissions by 2032, with less stringent guidelines for those set to close soon.
The brief ruling from Wednesday did not elaborate on its reasoning, which is customary for emergency orders. Justice Clarence Thomas expressed that he would have opposed the emissions regulation. The order also noted that Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in the discussions, though no explanation was provided.
In a concise statement, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with support from Justice Neil Gorsuch, stated that, while he concurred with the court’s decision to implement the emissions rule, he believed some Republican-led challenges “appear likely to succeed on the merits.”
Nonetheless, Kavanaugh pointed out that a lower court would have ample time to analyze the issue since power plants are not required to begin compliance until June 2025.
Environmental organizations and the EPA praised the ruling.
“Across the United States, individuals are enduring worsening storms and other disasters due to climate change,” stated Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund. “As mandated by Congress, the EPA set attainable standards to lessen the pollution originating from one of its largest contributors, fossil fuel-powered plants.”
West Virginia, one of the states that challenged the regulation, announced its intent to persist in opposing the rule.
“We will keep fighting through the merits process to demonstrate that this rule undermines state authority while obliging plants to adopt technologies that are not effective in practice,” stated Patrick Morrisey, the state’s attorney general. “In this case, the EPA is again attempting to overhaul the nation’s grid, leading power plants toward closure.”
The dispute is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In July, a panel of three judges denied a request from the conservative-led states to halt the EPA regulation while the litigation continued, leading those states and other groups to seek intervention from the Supreme Court.
The appeals court’s decision indicated there was no necessity to pause the EPA regulation during the ongoing litigation, as the case would move swiftly and federal compliance deadlines are years away, in 2030 or 2032.
The Biden administration proposed the rule in April as part of a wider strategy to reduce pollution from power plants. Several states led by Republican officials, including Indiana, Alabama, and Alaska, alongside West Virginia, filed challenges to the regulation on the same day.
In their urgent request, the states claimed the agency was “motivated by an aversion to fossil-fuel facilities” and aimed to “force the closure of coal-burning plants and transition to EPA’s preferred energy generation methods.”
The states asserted that the EPA overstepped its authority by developing the rule without explicit congressional consent, characterizing it as “an unlawful and ill-advised effort to reorganize the entire power industry.” They contended that the agency’s standards set “impossible benchmarks for regulated facilities, taking away states’ authority to mitigate impacts and effectively nudging regulated sources into premature decommissioning.”
In its response, the Biden administration maintained that the EPA acted within its jurisdiction to establish emission limits and concluded that a 90% carbon capture approach was optimal. This technology employs chemical solvents to extract carbon dioxide from a power plant’s exhaust and stores it underground permanently.
The Biden administration argued that the challengers did not contest the EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act but rather opposed the agency’s “technical and scientific assessments regarding the reliability, practicality, and expense of carbon capture.”
Those critics, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar noted, “largely overlook the extensive analysis” conducted by the EPA.
While challengers framed carbon capture as “an experimental, futuristic solution,” Prelogar added, the agency concluded that its advantages had been “sufficiently evidenced.”
