Will States & Courts Axe EPA Fossil Fuel Rules?

The Biden administration slipped through four environmental rules designed to put the coal industry out of business.

One of the rules mandates power plants capture carbon dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere and store the greenhouse gas underground. The carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) requirement is so costly it would force power plants to stop using coal altogether and drive up the cost of electricity.

Energy costs are unlikely to drop, especially in California and New York, where state-level regulations and enforcement is the toughest in the nation. Decades of air pollution rulemaking by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state agencies have driven up costs.

Barring a seismic shift in cost-efficient renewable fuels or a rollback of EPA regulations, count on energy and electricity prices to remain higher than they could be. Whether that’s good or bad news may depend on your views on climate change.

Biden EPA Tries Supreme Court End-Around

You may remember the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) that set greenhouse gas reduction rules for all 50 states. States like Ohio and West Virginia that use coal faced tougher mandates than states like Washington which rely heavily on hydro power.

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) eventually ruled Congress never granted EPA the power of “deciding how Americans will get their energy.” A majority of justices agreed EPA overstepped its authority by punishing one type of energy source (fossil fuels) and rewarding another (renewables like solar, wind and hydro). Side note: SCOTUS is about to announce a reversal of the 40-year-old Chevron deference afforded to federal agencies by the courts.

The Biden administration says energy companies can take advantage of tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act to finance CCS projects. EPA describes CCS as “an available and cost-reasonable emission control technology that can be applied directly to power plants and can reduce 90% of carbon dioxide emissions from the plants.”

That ignores the reality: only a handful of industrial facilities in the world are using or previously used CCS to capture emissions. However: CCS is a feasible option for fracking operations and oil & gas wells.

Red states like Texas and Florida are sure to sue the Biden administration. A coalition of states could opt not to comply at all, citing prior SCOTUS rulings.