WASHINGTON — Since February, when the Supreme Court held oral arguments in a case challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants, environmental lawyers and climate activists braced for a ruling that tattooed a deep, restrictive swath into the agency’s ability to curb emissions.
The court’s 6-3 ruling, issued Thursday, did limit the EPA’s authority to rein in those emissions, saying the agency did not have sweeping power under the law regulating carbon pollution from utilities. Instead, it stripped EPA’s authority to regulate that pollution under a section of that law known as 111(d).
“It says EPA can’t do generation shifting,” Thomas Lorenzen, partner at Crowell & Moring and co-chair of the firm’s environment and natural resources group, said in an interview, referencing a method the Obama administration pursued to address pollution. “But that’s all it says. On everything else, it’s got running room,” he said. “Given the makeup of this court, this was not necessarily a bad day for EPA.”
