By Clark Mindock
(Reuters) – A group of 25 Republican state attorneys general sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, seeking to block a landmark rule requiring sweeping reductions in carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants and new natural gas plants.
The lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is spearheaded by West Virginia and Indiana. It targets a rule finalized by President Joe Biden’s administration on April 25 as part of an effort to combat climate change.
The rule mandates that many new gas and existing coal plants reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2032. The requirements are expected to force the U.S. power industry to install billions of dollars’ worth of emissions control technologies or shut down the dirtiest facilities running on coal.
The regulations are part of Biden’s broader climate agenda and target a sector that is responsible for nearly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas pollution.
The lawsuit came a day after 23 Republican attorneys general from states including West Virginia, North Dakota and Texas challenged a different EPA rule that limits the amount of mercury and other hazardous pollutants that can be emitted from power plants.
The EPA declined to comment.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the regulations are based on emissions reduction technologies that have not been meaningfully deployed in the real world, exceed the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act, and would radically transform the nation’s energy grid without explicit congressional permission to do so.
He said the rule “is setting up the plants to fail and therefore shutter, altering the nation’s already stretched grid.”
(Reporting by Clark Mindock, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Christina Fincher and Michael Erman)
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