Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is pushing back on what he calls a “far-reaching attempt by the Biden administration to regulate what it cannot legislate.” Late last week, Carr joined a coalition of 21 states opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed new rule on existing coal, natural gas, and oil-fired power plants.
According to Carr, the proposal by the Biden Administration attempts to regulate into closure those plants under the Clean Air Act by imposing more stringent emissions standards. He goes on to say that the plan ignores last year’s rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, which warned that the EPA should not use a narrow regulatory provision to force coal-fired power plants into retirement en masse.
“This is yet another far-reaching attempt by the Biden administration to regulate what it cannot legislate, and hardworking Georgians would pay the price,” said Carr. “The EPA’s proposed rule would leave plants with only one of two options – spend millions of dollars in an effort to comply with arduous and seemingly impossible federal standards or cease operations entirely. The result would be lost jobs and wages for people across our state, and we will continue fighting to ensure the rule of law is upheld.”
In the letter, Carr and his peers sate, “As States, we take seriously both our traditional authority in energy regulation and our statutory role within the Clean Air Act’s cooperative-federalism framework. And in discharging those responsibilities, we aim to secure reliable, affordable, and environmentally responsible energy for everyone. But we write because the Proposed Rule undermines that goal.”
The letter goes on to explain how the proposal violates the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA because Congress still has not provided the EPA with clear statutory authorization to remake the electricity grids. That means the agency cannot sidestep Congress to exercise broad regulatory power that would radically transform the nation’s energy grids and force states to fundamentally shift their energy portfolios away from fossil fuel-fired generation.
In closing, the letter states: “The Proposed Rule at least abandons the more direct “generation-shifting” mandate that the Court rejected in West Virginia—but it still doubles down on the
earlier rule’s goals by setting unrealistic standards. If finalized, EPA’s impossible proposal will leave coal- and natural-gas plants with no other option but to close.”
