Biden’s Latest Effort to Make Everything You Need More Expensive
The Supreme Court saved consumers billions of dollars from higher prices when, less than a year ago, it struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan rule, which would have shut down hundreds of coal and gas power plants nationwide.
Now, under President Joe Biden’s direction, the EPA is back with a new regulatory scheme designed to accomplish the same result through more direct means. The end result should be the same. The Supreme Court will again strike down Biden’s illegal usurpation of congressional power, saving consumers billions of dollars in higher energy costs.
The last time the EPA tried to shut down coal and gas power plants, it used the 1970 Clean Air Act to establish an industrywide carbon cap-and-trade system for electricity production. This Clean Power Plan did not identify how specific power plants should cut carbon emissions, but the plan required them to do so and created a market for them to offset emissions by investing in clean power or buying carbon emission allowances. The scheme closely resembled a cap-and-trade plan that Congress had just rejected. Seven years later, in West Virginia v. EPA, the court invalidated the CPP, holding that the Clean Air Act was not intended to create an industrywide cap-and-trade regime for any one pollutant and that the EPA was exceeding its statutory authority by creating one for carbon.
This time, the EPA has abandoned its cap-and-trade approach and is instead following more closely to the original design of the Clean Air Act. Under this, the EPA may identify a “best system of emission reduction” for a pollutant and then force power plants to adopt it. This usually means installing a proven pollution control technology. (Read more from “Biden’s Latest Effort to Make Everything You Need More Expensive” HERE)
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