WASHINGTON — Conservative-majority members of the Supreme Court on Monday questioned the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, suggesting the court overrule the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate change. could inflict a heavy blow.
The interrogation during the two-hour argument was mostly technical, with several conservative judges holding back. But those who did sounded skeptical that Congress had wanted to give the agency what they believed to be immense power to determine national economic policy.
There seemed to be little interest in an argument advanced by the Biden administration and environmental groups: that the four cases brought before the judges, including West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 20-1530, were not ripe for a decision because there are no regulations in place. They said the court should wait to answer concrete questions rather than rule on hypothetical ones.
Attorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said the administration was working on a new ordinance, which the courts could consider after it was issued.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Judge Stephen G. Breyer said they thought the Supreme Court should not wait.
Much of the argument has centered on whether the Clean Air Act allowed the agency to enact sweeping regulations in the energy sector and, more broadly, how clearly Congress should empower executive agencies to address key political and economic issues. to deal with.
Last year, on the last full day of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, a federal appeals court in Washington rejected his administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Trump administration said the Clean Air Act unequivocally limits the measures the agency could use “that may be commissioned in any building, structure, facility or installation.”
A divided panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Trump administration’s plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, was based on a “fundamental misconstruction” of the relevant law, through a “tortured series of misreadings.”
“The EPA has sufficient discretion in carrying out its mandate,” the decision concluded. “But it must not evade its responsibility by imagining new restrictions that the plain language of the statute does not clearly require.”
The panel has not reinstated a 2015 Obama-era regulation called the Clean Power Plan, which would have forced utilities to move away from coal and toward renewable energy to cut emissions. But it rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to replace that rule with what critics say was a toothless rule.
The appeals court ruling also paved the way for the Biden administration to issue tougher restrictions.
The Obama-era plan aimed to cut energy sector emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. To do this, it instructed each state to draw up plans to reduce carbon emissions from power plants by phasing out coal and increasing renewable energy generation.
The Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan has never come into effect. It was blocked in 2016 by the Supreme Court, which effectively ruled that states were not required to comply until a barrage of lawsuits from conservative states and the coal industry were resolved. That ruling, followed by Supreme Court membership changes that moved it to the right, has left environmental groups wary of what the court might do in climate change cases.
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of experts convened by the United Nations, released the most comprehensive look yet at the threats global warming poses to homes, human health, livelihoods and natural ecosystems around the world. . The report, approved by 195 governments, found that the dangers of climate change are greater and unfolding faster than before and that humanity may struggle to adapt to the impacts unless greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly reduced in the coming decades. .
“Any further delay in coordinated anticipatory global action,” the report said, “will miss a short and fast-paced opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”
Brad Plumer contributed reporting