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More 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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