Supreme Court sharply limits EPA's ability to regulate CO2 from power plants, saying Congress didn't authorize it

Coal-fired plant in Winfield, W.Va. (Bloomberg photo by Luke Sharrett)

"The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a blow to the nation’s chances of averting catastrophic climate change," report Robert Barnes and Dino Grandoni of The Washington Post.

Ruling in a lawsuit filed by the State of West Virginia, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority, “Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day. But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.” The Post notes, "The court was considering the powers granted by the Clean Air Act, which was written decades ago, before climate change was widely recognized as a worldwide crisis."

 
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, another major coal state, said in a statement that EPA issued the greenhouse-gas regulations “without any clear congressional authorization” and the court “confirmed that only the people’s representatives in Congress — not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats — may write our nation’s laws.”

The regulations never took effect, because the Supreme Court blocked them, but EPA's "emission-reduction goals were met ahead of schedule because of economic conditions that made coal-fired plants more expensive," the Post reports. "The administration and environmentalists were stunned when the Supreme Court took the case" from West Virginia, because the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had ruled that a more lenient Trump administration plan intentionally misread the law. "As a result, the Trump rules were struck, the Obama rules were not reinstated and the Biden administration has yet to formulate its plan," the Post reports.