A federal appeals court rejected a rule that made it one of the Trump administration’s most important climate reversals
WASHINGTON – In a last-minute slap on President Donald Trump, a federal appeals court overturned one of his government’s most important climate reversals on Tuesday, saying the authorities acted illegally in publishing a new rule that facilitated federal regulation of air pollution by power plants.
The Trump administration rule was based on a “misreading of the Clean Air Act”, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled, adding that the Environmental Protection Agency “fundamentally misinterpreted the law”. The decision is likely to give the Biden government more freedom to regulate emissions from power plants, a major source of climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions.
EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said the agency’s handling of the change in rules was “well-founded”. The court’s decision “risks injecting more uncertainty at a time when the country needs regulatory stability,” she said.
Environmental groups celebrated the decision by a panel of three members of the Court of Appeals.
“Today’s decision is the perfect gift on Inauguration Day for America,” said Ben Levitan, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that challenged Trump’s rule in court.
The decision “confirms that the dubious attempt by the Trump administration to break free from common sense limits to climate pollution from power plants was illegal,” said Levitan. “Now we can turn to the extremely important job of protecting Americans from climate change and creating new jobs in clean energy.”
A coalition of environmental groups, some state governments and others have challenged the Trump administration’s so-called Clean Accessible Energy (ACE) rule for the energy sector. The rule, which became final in 2019, replaced the Clean Energy Plan, the Obama administration’s signature program to deal with climate change.
The court’s decision came on the last full day of the Trump administration’s term. Under Trump, the EPA revoked dozens of environmental and public health protections while the government sought to cut regulation in general, considering many of them unnecessary and a burden on businesses.
Trump, who campaigned in 2016 with a promise to bring the struggling coal industry back, repulsed the Obama administration’s plan to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants that power the country’s power grid. The Clean Energy Plan, one of President Barack Obama’s legacy efforts to slow climate change, was blocked in court before its revocation in 2017.
The Trump administration replaced the Clean Accessible Energy plan, which left most of the decision making about regulating emissions from power plants to states. Opponents said the rule did not impose significant limits on carbon pollution and would increase pollution by almost 20% of the country’s coal-fired plants.
Market forces continued the years-long decline of the U.S. coal industry, despite these and other Trump actions on behalf of the industry.
Andrea McGimsey, senior director of Environment America’s “solutions to global warming” campaign, said that Trump’s “Dirty Energy Plan” was “clearly disastrous and poorly designed regulation from the start. As the Trump administration leaves the position, we hope this decision reflects a much brighter future ” for renewable energies such as solar and wind.
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy panel, denounced “activist judges” in the appeals court who “appear to be intending to release the letters to the next Biden government to issue new punitive climate regulations” that he said that will be closed reducing plants and increasing energy costs.
But Congresswoman Kathy Castor, D-Fla., President of the House’s Select Committee on Climate Crisis, considered the decision a timely rejection of Trump’s effort to reverse the Obama-era Clean Energy Plan.
“It looks like we’re starting a new era of clean energy progress a day earlier,” said Castor. “It’s almost poetic to see our courts vacate this short-sighted and damaging policy on Trump’s last full day in office. ”
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Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.