Climate change experts were quick to denounce the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority when it issued regulations to limit power plant emissions.
that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority when it issued regulations to limit power plant emissions.
If the EPA finds that carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, is the best available pollution control technology, then it can require emissions cuts from coal-fired power plants so steep that they effectively have to install the technology or move away from coal. Many environmental advocates think that the courts will allow the EPA to mandate the use of CCS to lower emissions provided that EPA can argue that the technology is sufficiently affordable and accessible.
Some climate activists even expressed relief that the Supreme Court did not go further in limiting EPA’s authority."I think there is still a lane there and we were concerned we would have a roadblock,” Jay Duffy, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, who authored some of the briefs on the EPA’s side in the case,.
One thing most experts across the political spectrum agree on is that any CCS-based rule would be met with legal challenges from the same parties — the coal industry and Republican-led states — that just successfully overturned Obama’s Clean Power Plan. One of the main reasons is that carbon cannot be safely stored underground everywhere: It has to go in an existing cavern, such as a depleted oil field, and it has to be piped there from the power plant.
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