Colorado leaders say the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants further demonstrates the urgency to enact federal and statewide policies that curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The ruling means the EPA needs authorization from Congress to regulate the carbon emissions from power plants. The decision raises questions about how much the federal government can do to fight climate change and the extent that federal agencies can impose regulations.

Though the ruling will not affect Colorado’s ability to address climate change on a state level, environmental policy experts say it illuminates the need to find ways to make policy to address the climate crisis facing the state. With the EPA having more limitations to its powers, the court’s decision underscores the importance for states to recognize the threat that climate change poses through policymaking.

“Places that are able to put in place those policies are able to improve air quality and health outcomes and the like, and those are popular policies and we need to build on them from the individual state level to more broadly,” said Alex DeGolia, director for state legislative and regulatory affairs for the U.S. Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet expressed a sense of urgency for Congress to take steps to address climate change.

“The Court is harming America once again by playing politics instead of following science and the law. Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime and Colorado is on the front lines. Congress must act to correct this flawed decision – lives are at stake,” Hickenlooper said in a news release after the court’s decision.

Hickenlooper is a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. During his time as governor, Colorado became the first state in the nation to implement limits on methane pollution.

Federal agencies such as the EPA serve as regulatory departments. For the EPA specifically, the agency creates and enforces federal rules that address a variety of environmental issues such as oil spills or emissions. The ruling means that if agencies such as the EPA want to create regulations that have broad impacts on their own, Congress must create laws that specifically implement them.

“The bipartisan Clean Air Act has a 50-year track record of effectively protecting public health, curbing air pollution, and safeguarding our environment,” Bennet wrote in a news release. “This decision ignores the clear authority the Act gives EPA to keep our communities healthy and safe. With climate change bearing down on the American West, now is the time to strengthen protections for cleaning up air and water and for cutting climate pollution, not weaken them.”

Bennet serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee and is on the Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry and Natural Resources. Last month, he led a subcommittee hearing that addressed the climate crisis in the Western U.S. and urged the federal government to pay more attention to the climate issues facing the region.

DeGolia said Colorado has made good efforts to address climate change through policy, such as the passage of House Bill 1261 in the state Legislature in 2019. The bill established statewide goals for reducing emissions over the next 30 years by 90% compared with 2005 levels.

However, he said a big thing Colorado can do would be for the Air Quality Control Commission to evaluate the progress the state is making in reaching those targets as a result of the new policies being implemented. Doing that, he said, will help evaluate any gaps between the targets and the projections and eventually establish new regulations to help ensure the targets are met.

“States like Colorado have broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “We just need to double down on our work at the state level and elsewhere, in order to make sure that we are reducing emissions as fast as we can.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing in terms of the climate is how quickly we reduce emissions and how much we limit overall emissions, and so there are lots of opportunities to make progress there,” he said. “Colorado has made significant progress and has significant progress left to go, and so while we need to be thinking about how we do this as quickly as possible, there are lots of ways we can do so and most of them were not affected by the Supreme Court decision.”

Gov. Jared Polis quickly reaffirmed the state’s commitment to curbing emissions from power plants and urged the rest of the country to follow Colorado’s model.

“We have already locked in the closure of Colorado’s coal plants no later than 2031 because they produce the highest cost electricity,” Polis wrote in a news release. “To save people money, we are rapidly moving to lower cost solar and wind energy and today’s decision does not affect our plans. But today’s Supreme Court decision does narrow the ability of the federal government to take common sense steps to protect the air we breathe so state leadership is now more important than ever.”

Third Congressional District Rep. Lauren Boebert celebrated the court’s decision, saying the EPA did not have the power to regulate energy producers to begin with. In December 2021, Boebert filed an amicus brief in support of West Virginia, arguing that the EPA’s regulatory authority was an infringement on Congress’ legislative powers.

“Good riddance to the EPA’s Green New Deal-like executive mandates. We are facing the most pressing energy crisis since Jimmy Carter, yet the Biden regime is more focused on shutting down American energy production than delivering reliable, affordable energy to keep the lights on and gas prices low,” she said in a statement on June 30. “Climate ideologues are out-of-touch with the American people, and I am grateful that their war on coal was found unconstitutional. The Supreme Court again made the right decision and courageously defended the Constitution’s separation of powers. Executive agencies have the power to enforce the law, not make it.”

Based on the 2005 baseline levels used to calculate emission reduction standards for Colorado, electricity generation and transportation made up the largest percentage of emissions, at 29% and 22%, respectively. Oil and gas made up 14.4%, industrial plants were 9.2% and commercial and residential buildings accounted for the remaining 8.5%. However, recent modeling has shown that the state’s overall emissions have declined.

“The most important thing is, on the one hand, we really need to move as fast as we can,” DeGolia said. “Climate disasters are more frequent, more deadly, more costly. We’re feeling the effects of climate change more and more every day, and we have lots of tools in our toolbox including robust state statutes to help drive reductions in emissions.”

​​Nina Heller is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at nheller@durangoherald.com.

An earlier version of this story erred in saying U.S. Sen Michael Bennet serves on the Senate Energy Committee. He serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee.