Despite Supreme Court Decision, Clean Energy Revolution Continues to Grow

The Supreme Court’s decision to slam the brakes on the president’s most important climate regulation has had an immediate impact at home and overseas, prompting several states to halt their carbon-cutting efforts, while sowing doubts internationally about the United States’ ability to meet its promises. The rule is viewed as the cornerstone of the Obama administration’s strategy for meeting the emissions reductions agreed to in the Paris climate change pact signed this past December.

“It was simply without regard to the high cost to American taxpayers”, Rounds said of the plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions primarily from coal-fired power plants.

McCarthy underscored that the power industry is already making the shift away from coal-fired power plants to renewables or cleaner burning natural gas and that the Clean Power Plan merely followed and locked in place that transition.

Now, the Supreme Court appears to be placing the interests of USA coal companies ahead of the well-being of planet Earth and all who live on it – and ahead of the reputation of the U.S.as a country that honors its global agreements.

The Supreme Court’s decision to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power-plant regulations is a disturbing signal that it might eventually kill them altogether.

Montana mines about 44 million tons of coal a year, the seventh most of any state, but it has the biggest coal reserves. In fact, the DC Circuit has only issued one stay of an environmental statute in recent memory (and perhaps in its history): That being a stay of the controversial Cross-State Air Pollution Rule-also known as the Transport Rule-which required certain states to improve air quality by reducing power plant emissions that contribute to ozone and fine particulate pollution in other states. “Republicans will continue to examine EPA’s overzealous rules through the legislative process so we protect American energy consumers from these burdensome costs and increased energy bills”.

Despite claims from industry opponents and 27 Republican-led states that the EPA regulation is an “unprecedented power grab”, there is precedent for the Clean Power Plan – unlike for this week’s stay. He said the early emission goals in the plan – those that would satisfy the Paris pledges in the coming decade – were “absolutely” within reach.

The repercussions of the Supreme Court’s decision will likely stretch beyond Obama’s term and pose one of the first challenges for the new president.

“We’re going to continue doing that work, but it will be in the spirit of a program we’re not implementing now”, she said. “The entire edifice built at Paris could collapse, much as the Kyoto Protocol was seriously undermined by President George W. Bush’s withdrawal of the US from that agreement”. The coal field communities that have been so hard-hit by the changing economy, the reduction in the use of coal.

Moving aggressively on clean energy solutions is just good stewardship.

And the plan is but one element of many in United States climate policy. This includes passing laws blocking regulators from moving forward and requiring legislative approval of any state plans, should the stay ever be lifted.

It worked. The Supreme Court issued a stay, halting implementation of the rule and sending the action back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the actual case as soon as June of this year.

“Whatever the court decides and our neighboring states and our receiving states choose, Wyoming should be prepared”, said State Sen.