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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMore than two dozen states are challenging a new Biden administration rule that forces U.S. power plants to stifle greenhouse gas pollution, calling it an unlawful bid to remake the nation’s electricity system.
The lawsuit—one of several expected to take aim at the mandates—was filed by 25 states in a Washington, D.C.-based federal appeals court Thursday. The lawsuit is being co-led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who called the effort an overreach “that threatens the reliability of our power grid and will once again jack up utility costs for regular, everyday Hoosiers.”
The suit is being co-led by coal-rich West Virginia, where Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is looking to reprise successful battles against earlier power plant regulations.
Morrisey said the Biden administration acted in defiance of a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to impose wide-ranging greenhouse gas mandates that seek to shift power generation away from fossil fuels.
“This Green New Deal agenda the Biden administration continues to force onto the people is setting up the plants to fail and therefore shutter, altering the nation’s already stretched grid,” Morrisey said in a news release.
The lawsuit sets up a legal fight over the future of greenhouse gas curbs on the nation’s power plants at a time when data centers, artificial intelligence and industrial manufacturing are boosting electricity demand. It also presents a test of a core piece of President Joe Biden’s agenda for fighting climate change.
The new EPA rule will force the nation’s current fleet of coal plants to capture nearly all of their carbon dioxide emissions—or close down—by 2039. And it will compel similar pollution cuts for many of the new gas-fired plants built to replace them. The requirements are built on a determination that the best system of emission reduction for many power plants is carbon capture technology that’s been available for decades but has barely been in commercial use in the electric sector today.
Other challenges are expected. The interim chief executive officer of American Electric Power Co. last week said the company would “do what we have to do to defend our grid and our customers.” And the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association intends to file its own challenge later Thursday. The group’s CEO, Jim Matheson, said the rule represents an illegal attempt “to transform the US energy economy by forcing a shift in electricity generation to the agency’s favored sources.”
Repeating a strategy used to derail former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan in 2016, West Virginia will be asking the court to swiftly stay the regulation, preventing it from going into force while litigation proceeds.
An EPA spokesman declined to comment.
“Hardworking Hoosiers and businesses depend on reliable energy at affordable prices,” Rokita said in written comments. “They understand these draconian measures are chasing unrealistic goals and will do nothing to actually improve our already good air quality. They also know the importance of protecting the authority of state and local government against power-hungry unelected federal bureaucrats. This lawsuit is all about standing up for Hoosiers on all these counts.”
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Coal is literally the second-most expensive source of power generation. It’s second only to nuclear, and even that metric is running off of old first-generation nuclear power plants that use outdated heavy water reactors. This lawsuit is a waste of time and money.
Isn’t that the definition for everything that Rokita does?
Currently Solar and Wind cannot provide the energy the country needs. Forcing “green” energy on the country is a recipe for disaster. Until a source of energy that works when the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t blow or that you can affordably and effectively store, we are working a fools errand.
Add to that the amount of land that it would take, 22,000 square miles or an area about the size of Lake Michigan, to currently power the US is a environmental and economic disaster waiting to happen.
The US will pull away from carbon based fuels, but you can’t force it when the technology is not ready.
AES doesn’t think so. In 2023, only 28% of its generation is coal with the goal of getting rid of it by, I think 2030.
Goals without deadlines are nothing more than dreams. If coal power plants think clean sustainable energy sources are decades away, they will delay their own preparations to shut down their plants and/or convert to alternative sources of power to generate electricity. Funny how human nature procrastinates on the big stuff.
This is purely a corporate protectionism effort. It has nothing to do with reliability or capacity.
Wall Street has already declared Coal DEAD.
Wall Street Executives has decided that their families and themselves do not want to live in dirty unhealthy nasty environments. Accordingly, they refuse to finance any sufficient scale coal applications at either mine site or generation facilities.
Without financing, project will not go anywhere.
In this day and age, I cannot believe that there is anyone on this planet that doesn’t know coal is more expensive to use! And that is without accounting for the health costs to this country for all the coal miners and people working in and near them. This political postering against eliminating coal usage – especially by politicians – reminds me of the safety rules put in place reguiring seat belts that so many people decried. It took years for people to stop complaining about those rules until the deaths from car accidents plunged. The same was true about requiring gasolne manufacturers to remove lead from gasoline by 1996 – even though we knew it was harmful as early as the 1920’s. The same resistance happened when the auto manufacturers were required to raise the miles per gallon on new vehicles. Can’t we stop this insanity when we know coal fired anything is harmful!