COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put the brakes on an Environmental Protection Agency emissions rule for coal-fired power plants.
State attorneys general filed a motion with the Supreme Court on Wednesday asking it to suspend the rule that requires power plants to capture and store 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions or shut them down within eight years.
According to an EPA impact assessment, the new rules will save a total of 1.4 billion tons of carbon emissions by 2047. That’s equivalent to avoiding the annual emissions of 328 million gasoline cars, or nearly the annual emissions of the entire U.S. electricity sector. Net climate and public health benefits of up to $320 billion are expected over the next two decades.
But Yost and Kobach argue that the EPA does not have the authority under the Clean Air Act to enforce the regulations, citing a court decision in another case that prohibited the agency from forcing power plants to transition away from fossil fuels.
The emissions rule strips states of their rights and presents power plants with “impossible choices” that inevitably favor the agency’s “climate agenda,” Yost’s office said in a statement.
The EPA is giving the power plants a hopeless option: They could either risk billions of dollars on unproven technologies to meet unattainable benchmarks, or they would shut down the plants, the filing says.
Likewise, states could decide to either spend money immediately to comply with a likely illegal regulation or sit idly by as the federal government encroaches on their sovereignty, the document says.
Yost is not the first Ohio official to criticize this rule.
Republican U.S. Representative Troy Balderson of Zanesville is leading the fight against the rule in Congress because, in addition to requiring emissions controls for coal-fired power plants, new natural gas-fired power plants must also comply with the rules. The rule also includes provisions to reduce emissions of toxic metals and mercury. Balderson’s district stretches across some of Ohio’s largest natural gas fields currently in production.
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Cleveland, also opposes the rule. He said the regulations would hurt rural electric cooperatives in Ohio. The technology to eliminate the emissions is promising but has not yet been proven on a commercial scale. The emission levels are unlikely to be achievable within the timeframe set by President Joe Biden and could cost union jobs, he said.
Laura Hancock covers state government and politics for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
