06 Jul 2022
Climate Progress Will Accelerate Despite The Supreme Court's Recent EPA Ruling
On Thursday, June 30, the US Supreme Court ruled to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate carbon emissions produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants in the case West Virginia v. EPA.
Today, power plants are the second-largest GHG emitters in the US. Among electricity-producing power plants, coal combustion is the most carbon-intensive energy source compared to natural gas and other fuel sources. In order to tackle these emissions, the EPA issued the Affordable Clean Energy Rule in 2019 promulgated under the Clean Air Act. Under this rule, the EPA issued new guidelines for states to use in developing plans to limit CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants.
The EPA identified three tools (or “building blocks”) to create a “best system of emission reduction” (BSER) for a collection of power plants:
Heat Rate Improvements, which are improvements that a coal plant makes to burn fuel more efficiently