The Supreme Court limited how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but preserved its authority to do so, in a 6-3 ruling Thursday that sided with coal interests.
Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, was in West Virginia at a meeting of coal producers when the decision came down.
“There were a lot of cheers in the room,” he said.
West Virginia sued the Obama EPA more than six years ago over the Clean Power Plan, a 2015 rule that capped allowable carbon emissions from electricity in an effort to reduce the share generated by coal-fired power plants.
The Supreme Court blocked the rule from taking effect. It was later repealed by the Trump administration. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump-era replacement in early 2021, technically reinstating the Clean Power Plan.
But the Biden EPA said it would not enforce the rule, and instead come up with its own emissions standards, raising questions about whether the Supreme Court should consider the case at all.
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Coal companies and Republican attorneys general from West Virginia, Wyoming and 16 other states, by then challenging both the Clean Power Plan and the lower court ruling, asked the Supreme Court to take up the case anyway. Environmental groups and another two dozen attorneys general objected. Utilities were split.
Wyoming joined the case to protect its coal industry “from federal overreach intent only on curtailing coal-fired electric generation,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in a statement.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative, the electricity wholesaler that operates the Laramie River Station and Dry Fork Station coal plants in Wyoming, also filed a petition urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the Clean Power Plan.
“The regulations proposed nearly a decade ago would have fundamentally altered the manner in which electricity is generated in the United States, forcing Basin Electric and other utilities to prematurely retire fossil fuel-based generation,” company spokesman Andy Buntrock said in an emailed statement.
The court heard and ultimately opted to rule on the case — in part, the majority opinion said, because the current administration still “‘vigorously defends’ the legality of such an approach.”
Under the Obama and Biden administrations — but not the Trump administration — the EPA interpreted a requirement in the Clean Air Act, that it institute the “best system of emission reduction,” as affording substantial regulatory discretion over greenhouse gases.
Thursday’s opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, determined that Congress had not given the EPA sufficient authority to institute the Clean Power Plan. Instead, in trying to reshape the electric grid without direct authorization, the agency strayed too far from its traditional focus on reducing emissions from individual sources.
“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” the opinion said.
Wyoming’s coal, oil and gas trade groups applauded the new constraints on EPA authority. So did the state’s top elected officials.
Sen. John Barrasso said the ruling “rightfully reins in unreasonable and unlawful attempts to shut down American power plants and energy production.”
Gordon declared it “a clean win for Wyoming.”
But Justice Elena Kagan, joined in dissent by the other two liberal justices, argued that the decision was an overreach in its own right.
“The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision-maker on climate policy,” Kagan wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
The majority opinion came as a blow to climate advocates — and a potential setback for an EPA still figuring out its own plan to curb carbon emissions.
“Today’s decision puts, I think, some big questions into how EPA is going to be able to move forward to address the climate crisis,” said Shannon Anderson, staff attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners’ group.
Many groups that backed the Clean Power Plan in 2015, including the Powder River Basin Resource Council, hoped the Supreme Court would choose to punt the final decision back to the lower court. They also feared much worse: What if the court broke with precedent and decided the Clean Air Act didn’t give the EPA authority to regulate carbon emissions at all?
The decision fell somewhere in the middle. While the agency lost some discretionary power over greenhouse gases, that authority was by no means eviscerated.
“Regulations going forward are going to be different than regulations we’ve seen in the past,” Anderson said. “But it’s up to the EPA to figure that out.”
