Posted on April 3, 2015 by Dick Stoll
As most followers of this blog know, EPA proposed its “Clean Power Plan” for existing electric power plants under the Clean Air Act (CAA) in June 2014. And just this week (March 31), the Obama Administration with great fanfare submitted its 2025 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target to the United Nations for the international climate change convention.
The Administration pledged to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 26-28% (below 2005 levels) by 2025, and the bulk of these reductions are supposed to come from the Plan. But will the massive reductions EPA claims will result from the Plan ever occur?
Defending the legality of the Plan in an interview published in the March 31 Wall Street Journal, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy claims she is “following the direction of the Supreme Court” and doing “exactly what the statute [CAA] tells us we’re supposed to do.”
Huh? While the Supreme Court has recognized EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs under the CAA, it most certainly has not given EPA the “direction” EPA is taking in its pending proposal. And neither has Congress.
EPA’s Plan would mandate a panoply of groundbreaking controls on energy supply and demand. It would force utilities to use natural gas rather than coal, ramp up renewable energy use (wind, solar), and impose mandates for reducing energy consumption. Yet the CAA provision for which EPA claims authority for all this (§111(d)) only authorizes EPA to impose “standards for emissions” upon “existing sources” of air pollution — such as power plants. The controls must also be “adequately demonstrated.” In the past EPA applied this authority faithfully to the statutory terms, so “sources” that emit pollution are limited to prescribed amounts of emissions.
While EPA’s proposal includes some real emission standards for air pollution sources (power plants), the vast majority of GHG reductions are to come from the energy supply/demand measures that have no basis in the text of the CAA. If you are compelled through these mandates to limit your dishwasher use to specified hours or pay higher rates, is your dishwasher an “existing source” of “air pollution” and are the hourly restrictions “emission standards”? And how can such novel approaches be “adequately demonstrated”?
The Administration tried but failed to obtain amendments to the CAA from Congress to address climate change. EPA’s Plan might have been authorized by that failed effort, and it might be authorized by future legislation. The Plan’s pioneering provisions might arguably reflect good public policy. But under the CAA as it now stands, EPA is not authorized to impose them.
As for “direction” from the Supreme Court? In its recent Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA opinion (June 23, 2014), the Court rejected EPA’s attempt to regulate GHGs by “tailoring” the unambiguous text of the statute. The Clean Power Plan doesn’t just “tailor” the terms of the statute — it attempts to weave new authority out of whole cloth.
Tags: Clean Power Plan
Clean Air Act | Environmental Protection Agency | Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)