As Texans swelter under an unrelenting heatwave and breathe polluted air, Ken Paxton joined 16 other state attorneys general in celebrating the Supreme Court decision on Thursday to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. With West Virginia leading the charge and coal companies joining in, the group had filed a lawsuit last year against the EPA asking the Justices to reign in the federal agency’s powers under the Clean Air Act.
The lawsuit took aim at former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a defunct EPA rule from 2015 that would have required electricity providers to cut emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. The plan called not just for incremental upgrades at individual facilities but for states and utilities to remix their energy portfolios to include more renewables over time (as well as temporarily switch from coal to gas) either directly or through a cap-and-trade system.
This week, the Court ruled against the EPA in favor of the coal industry. The EPA continues to have some overarching authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The agency just can’t do so by mandating a systemic switch to cleaner sources of energy.
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