Constitutional Law

EPA Action Weakens Efforts To Limit Power Plant Emissions

A ruling from the Environmental Protection Agency may ease the way for the construction of more power plants. The Washington Post reports that the ruling from late yesterday will allow the construction of new power plants without technology to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act. But in the ruling from EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, the agency declared it did not need to regulate the pollutant. “The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls,” he said. The ruling was the result of a challenge by the Sierra Club to the EPA’s issuance of a permit to a coal-fired plant in Utah, which was granted without requiring it to limit its carbon dioxide emissions, The Post reported. An attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council criticized the EPA for issuing a ruling “that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on December 31, 1969 (boomark / email).