Court’s EPA ruling will not alter Lamont’s climate goals
The end of the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions at power plants, ushered in by the U.S. Supreme Court, will have a few immediate impacts in Connecticut, where the last coal-fired power plant was shuttered last year and state officials have long followed their own ambitious goals to combat climate change.
In the long term, however, experts warned that the ruling will have profound effects on the federal government's ability to manage a warming climate, with the impacts affecting both states that have been proactive in lowering emissions and those that have ignored the crisis.
“This is another example of the Supreme Court advancing an ideological agenda that serves special interests, but not the national interest,” Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement. “We are running out of time as a nation to take action and prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”
Lamont, a Democrat, has continued the work of his predecessors in setting rigorous deadlines to phase out gas-guzzling vehicles and power plants that run on fossil fuels by mid-century.
Those efforts — as well as similar carbon-cutting timelines adopted in states like New York and California — have outpaced the federal government's plans to force utilities to transition away from coal- and oilfired power plants toward more renewable sources, which were scrapped under President Donald Trump's administration in favor of weaker guidelines.
The Supreme Court blocked any attempt to bring back the tougher regulations under President Joe Biden on Thursday, ruling in the case West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency that the administration lacked the authority under the decades-old Clean Air Act to seek the closure of power plants that are among the country's largest sources of greenhouse gasses.
Andres Restrepo, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club who served as the organization's lead counsel in the West Virginia case, said Friday that the ruling will have no effect on each state's ability to enact its own regulations on power plants, such as Lamont's plan to produce entirely carbonfree electricity by 2040.
Without federal regulations pushing for cleaner energy in states where officials have taken little action to address climate change, however, Restrepo said that worsening effects will be felt everywhere.
“Greenhouse gas emissions are not localized: they get into the atmosphere, they mix in the atmosphere and they have a warming effect on the entire planet,” Restrepo said. “Certainly with climate, that's exactly the reason that coordinated national and global efforts are necessary.”
Advocates for the court's ruling described it as a victory for the authority of Congress — which has remained gridlocked over climate policy — as well as for the energy sector. The official who led the group of state attorneys general in their lawsuit against the EPA, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, is a Republican who hails from a major coal-producing state.
“This ruling is not about climate change, it's really about a very simple proposition: who gets to make the major decisions of the day?” Morrisey said during an appearance on “PBS NewsHour.” “Should it be unelected bureaucrats … or should it be Congress?”
In Connecticut, however, officials and activists have long complained about the dirty, polluted air spewed by industries in other states that blows eastward over New England — contributing toward the poor air quality that has led some to dub the region as the “tailpipe of the nation.”
Before the court's decision, lawmakers in Connecticut along with New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts had sought to clean up some of the polluted air produced locally by imposing new regulations to require increased sales of lower and zero-emissions trucks.
“We're doing our part, but we've got all this bad air coming from states that don't have to clean up their act, or now won't,” said Lori Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters.
The court's ruling did not immediately impact the EPA's ability to regulate other pollutants that are a major factor in causing smog and respiratory issues, Restrepo said. However,
he warned that the decision reflected a more conservative approach that federal courts have taken while considering regulations, such one judge's decision in April to strike down the transportation mask mandate issued by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The ruling will likely pave the way for future challenges to federal regulations affecting everything from public health and workplace safety to protections for endangered species and oversight of banks, Restrepo said.
“To us, it is disturbing and frankly ominous,” Restrepo said of the decision.
In the absence of stricter federal rules, Restrepo and climate activists called on states such as Connecticut to do even more to address
climate change and lower emissions.
In his statement Thursday, Lamont promised to continue working with other governors to “lead the way” on addressing climate change, while also calling on Congress to take federal action. Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat who joined a coalition opposing the Trump administration's weakening of climate regulations, said the court's decision was likely “just the beginning” of its efforts to undermine and overturn federal regulations.
Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, noted in a statement on Friday that the proposed federal regulations struck down by the court included a cap-andtrade style program that is
similar to a regional initiative to reduce greenhouse gasses that Connecticut has participated in since 2009.
“Connecticut, like many states, has been leading on decarbonization of our electric grid for decades, relying largely on state authority, and we will continue to do so irrespective of this decision,” Dykes said.
While the court's ruling limited the tools available to the EPA to reduce emissions at power plants, the Biden administration said this week that it will still assemble a plan to address climate change through executive action. Activists also called on Congress to take up the president's Build Back Better Plan, which includes $555 billion in climate and clean energy investments.