In the wake of a major Supreme Court decision, a free market energy group is encouraging state governments to not comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) global warming rules.
The U.S. Supreme Court halted the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) from being implemented in a 5-4 vote Tuesday — so the court has a chance to rule on its legality down the road. In response to the ruling, the American Energy Alliance mailed out “stop work” orders to all state governors and regulators, asking them not to submit compliance plans to the EPA.
“This ‘Stop Work’ approach is the best way for state leaders to protect their citizens from the higher energy costs and job losses that this unlawful regulation would undoubtedly cause,” Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, said in a statement Friday. “As a country, we should focus on ways to make electricity more affordable, not on implementing regulations that will raise energy costs, which hit the poor and middle class the hardest.”
The CPP requires states to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector. The rule is expected to result in the closure of coal-fired power plants across the country.
Even EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admits the court ruling stalls the CPP’s implementation. McCarthy, however, encouraged states to continue working on CPP compliance plans despite the unresolved legal issues. McCarthy says she “remains fully confident in the legal merits of this rule,” and claims the Supreme Court’s stay “doesn’t mean they spoke to the merits” of the CPP.
This is great news for the 29 states suing the federal government to stop the CPP, which asked the Supreme Court to halt implementation after a lower court rejected their appeal in January.
“The [CPP] illegally forces states to overhaul their energy portfolio and does so without congressional authority, costing countless jobs, increasing electricity prices and jeopardizing energy reliability,” Patrick Morrisey, the West Virginia attorney general who has led the legal battle, said in a statement from late January. ” Without Supreme Court intervention, West Virginia and other states [would have suffered] irreparable harm as job creators and state agencies spend untold resources to comply with a rule that is likely to be struck down as illegal.”
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