US Ruling to Halt Carbon Regulations ‘Positive’ for Power Producers

The court dealt a serious blow to the Obama administration’s climate change agenda on Tuesday when it took the unusual step of delaying implementation of the Clean Power Plan until legal challenges to the regulation are completed.

Industry leaders say it’s a legal victory for now, but that it’s still unclear how the plan will look for coal country once it returns to the Supreme Court.

The case will be argued in the D.C. District Court this June.

Production of Central Appalachian coal-mainly from West Virginia and Kentucky-was 40 percent below average between 2010 and 2014, and a decline in coal jobs has led West Virginia to have the negative distinction of being the only state in the USA where more than half of adults are out of work.

Last November, Wicker voted in support of two measures aimed at blocking implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) costly rule.

Tong said the coal industry plays a massive role in the larger US economy; it is foundational to our electricity system and way of living.

Melissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for American Electric Power Co., one of the biggest coal users among USA utilities, said the Supreme Court’s stay order on Obama’s clean-power plan proves that the case her firm filed has merit.

The federal rule aimed at combating climate change encourages states to rely more on wind, solar and natural gas-fired power, and use less coal, to reach carbon emissions cuts of 32 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper sees the Clean Power Plan as a cornerstone of the state’s climate agenda.

But we do know that the court has repeatedly upheld the EPA’s power – in fact, its responsibility – to limit climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. “This a legal decision that says, ‘Hold on until we review the legality.’ We are very firm in terms of the legal footing here”.

But the Supreme Court’s stay has shaken and startled many administration officials and environmental activists, because it is so rare for the high court to intervene at this stage of litigation.

“A win implies that the advancement of the Clean Power Plan would have been detrimental to IN, and I think that’s not true”, says Jessie Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council.