Reality tempers optimism in coal country after court ruling

The Clean Power Plan, though its goals are insufficiently ambitious, is the centerpiece of the administration’s carbon-reduction promises under December’s Paris Agreement, in which almost 200 nations committed to limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Supreme Court itself upheld the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, specifically granting authority for the EPA to limit carbon pollution from power plants under the Clean Air Act. It’s meant to help combat climate change resulting from excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. States were ordered to submit, by 2018, plans to replace some of their coal-fired power with natural gas or renewables (or have the federal government impose a plan for them), and they were to start cutting emissions in 2022. The EPA has estimated the move would cut 870 million tons of carbon pollution and bring $54 billion in health and climate benefits.

“We’re still reducing CO2, and the general curve, in terms of our emissions reductions, that’s not going to change because of what happened yesterday”, Quin Shea, the vice president for environmental policy at the Edison Electric Institute, told Wall Street executives Wednesday.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, said the high court “was right to stop implementation of the Obama administration’s arbitrary energy plan that favors unreliable wind power over more reliable clean sources of energy like nuclear power”.

“We took the lead in this effort. If a stay of the Clean Power Plan is granted, there is a real threat that some other countries, including major emitters, might reduce the intensity or pace of their actions or even fail to achieve their commitments”. “EPA is seeking to transform itself from being an environmental regulator into a central energy-planning authority for the states”. “In BP, we believe carbon pricing has an important part to play as it provides incentives for everyone to play their part”. “In fact, without any regulation, co-ops led the nation in grid modernization through Advanced Metering Infrastructure, distribution automation, self-healing networks and demand management”, Stephens said.

Some states-including California and some of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states-are likely to continue taking steps to promote renewable energy production and developing regional climate change pacts. What would not be so understandable is if the court ultimately ripped the plan apart. Today, 38 co-ops in the state are members. “We have so many sunny days in Colorado that solar power just makes sense, and green industry is just starting to boom in Colorado”. “We drove this process over the a year ago and a half”, said Morrisey. “This is proof that cooperatives take on challenges and develop creative solutions”.

Former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, contradicting the Obama White House, has said a Supreme Court order temporarily halting an EPA rule on power plant emissions could derail President Obama’s cherished global climate change agreement.

In a 5-4 vote, the high court this week halted implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan until legal challenges are resolved.

The decision shocked many court watchers, dismayed those in favor of strong climate action and elicited comparisons to the infamous Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, with many saying that the court had once again abandoned judicial restraint and legal reasoning in favor of bald political gamesmanship.