CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The federal EPA’s Clean Power Plan is on hold as of a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last month, but debate on its legality continues.
In a telephone briefing on Tuesday, environmental advocate groups including Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense discussed a brief they are filing in support of the CPP.
The roughly 40-page legal brief will be filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A release referred to to those opposed to the CPP as “the polluters and their allies.”
“While fossil fuel interests might wish otherwise, time runs only forward, not back,” said Howard I. Fox, counsel for Earthjustice. “Steady, unstoppable progress to a clean energy future is already underway, and the Clean Power Plan builds on that progress with readily achievable cuts in the carbon pollution that is threatening our climate and communities.”
Joanne Spalding, Chief Climate Counsel at the Sierra Club was confident that the stay would eventually be overturned.
“The Clean Power Plan offers significant public health and economic benefits, enjoys wide majorities of support across the country, and is rooted in the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision finding that the EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon pollution from power plants. We are confident the Plan will ultimately prevail in the courts and that its full benefits will be implemented nationwide,” she said in a statement.
The brief prompted a response from state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has lead the charge in fighting what he sees as EPA overreach.
“It’s an unlawful power grab of epic proportions and goes further than virtually any regulation we have seen in our lifetime. If left unchallenged, this power grab will increase electricity rates, jeopardize the power grid’s reliability and destroy West Virginia’s coal industry along with the livelihoods of countless families who depend upon its success,” said Morrisey.
Morrisey went on to say he would strongly oppose efforts to “bully” job producers into compliance with the “illegal and unprecedented” regulation.
The plan is targeting a 32 percent reduction in carbon emissions from the power sector nationwide by the year 2030, which coal supporters fear would effectively bury an industry already on life-support.
In one of the last Supreme Court decisions that late Justice Antonin Scalia was alive for, the Court issued a stay on the CPP on Feb. 9.