WASHINGTON – Lawyers for a coalition of states and businesses reliant on fossil fuels made their case Tuesday to a federal appeals court that President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail climate-warming greenhouse gases is an unconstitutional power grab.
The Clean Power Plan, which aims to ratchet down carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants, has been challenged by more than two dozen mostly Republican-led states led by West Virginia and Texas, as well as allied industry groups that profit from mining and burning coal. Colorado is among the states seeking a curtailment of Obama’s plan.
The opponents contend the carbon-cutting plan unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency will kill coal-mining jobs and drive up electricity costs. The Obama administration, some Democratic-led states and environmental groups counter it will spur hundreds of thousands of new clean-energy jobs installing emissions-free wind turbines and solar panels.
The Supreme Court has delayed implementation until the legal challenges are resolved.
The rules are considered essential to the United States meeting emissions-reduction targets in a global climate agreement signed in Paris last year. The plan aims to help stave off the worst predicted impacts of climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants by about one-third by 2030.
Regardless of which side prevails at the appeals level, the issue is considered likely to end up being decided by the Supreme Court.
Appearing Tuesday before a 10-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin argued that the EPA had overstepped the regulatory authority provided it by Congress to impose emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.
By limiting carbon emissions as it does other pollutants such as mercury and sulfur dioxide, Lin said the EPA was in effect requiring states to transform their electricity generation systems by favoring one source of energy over another. West Virginia’s economy is reliant on coal mining and gets 96 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants.
“This rule is not about improving the performance of existing power plants,” Lin told the judges. “It’s about shutting them down.”
Much of the legal debate focused on the EPA’s existing rule-making authority under the Clean Air Act to implement the “best system of emissions reduction,” and whether Congress meant the word “system” to apply only to the machinery inside power plants or more broadly to the various ways that electricity can be generated.
