US Supreme Court limits authorities’ power to limit carbon dioxide emissions – VG

The US Supreme Court is placing limits on how the nation’s most important anti-pollution law applies to carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

By six votes to three, the conservative majority said the “Clean Air Act” does not give environmental authorities the EPA broad authority to regulate emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.

The ruling may make it more difficult for President Joe Biden to fight climate change. According to the plan, he will present a plan by the end of the year to regulate emissions from the energy sector.

Biden’s goal is to reduce US emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieve a zero-emissions energy sector by 2035. Today, power plants account for about 30 percent of US carbon dioxide emissions.

The Supreme Court had brought the case at the same time that a UN panel said the effects of climate change were getting worse, and the result on the planet would be more disease, hunger, poverty and unrest in the years to come.

complicated story

The dispute over emissions from power plants has a long and complex history, beginning with former President Barack Obama’s “Clean Energy Plan” to get states to reduce emissions by shifting electricity production away from coal-fired power plants.

This plan has never been implemented since the Supreme Court blocked it as a result of court decisions in West Virginia and other coal states.

When Donald Trump came to power, the Trump-appointed EPA chief scrapped the entire plan, instead creating a new one that deprived the EPA of much of its power.

New York and 21 other more democratic countries, as well as Washington, D.C. and some of the largest cities in the United States, filed a lawsuit, but the Federal Court of Appeals overturned the new plan and dismissed the lawsuit, leaving nothing.

However, the cuts are complete

It’s a piece of history that in the years that have passed, the cuts in Obama’s plan had already been implemented, as well as well before 2030, because hundreds of coal-fired power plants were closed for market reasons. Coal mining costs much more than extracting cleaner energy.

Power plant operators that employ 40 million customers have asked the court to keep power plants flexible to reduce emissions, and they are backed by big companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.

There were 19 mostly Republican-controlled states and several coal-fired power plants that led the fight against the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions.