{"id":2105,"date":"2015-05-27T18:18:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T22:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2023-07-25T15:58:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T19:58:33","slug":"2105","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/2015\/05\/27\/2105\/","title":{"rendered":"What, Me Worry? Comforting Thoughts on the Clean Power Plan, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ElectricityThis summer, the Environmental Protection Agency (\u201cEPA\u201d) is expected to promulgate the final version of its Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations aimed at decreasing the carbon dioxide (\u201cCO2<\/sub>\u201d) emissions of U.S. power plants to 30% below 2005 levels over the next 15 years. Critics have argued that the plan oversteps the bounds of EPA\u2019s power to regulate air pollution. In this two-part post, David Baake \u201914, a former editor and writer for ELR, argues that the Clean Power Plan is well within EPA\u2019s regulatory authority. This part addresses the impact of some worrying dicta in the recently decided <\/em>Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the Clean Power Plan have seized upon a passage from the Supreme Court\u2019s opinion in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA<\/a> <\/em>(\u201cUARG<\/em>\u201d) to support their contention that the Clean Power Plan exceeds EPA\u2019s authority under the Clean Air Act. The relevant passage states:<\/p>\n

When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy, we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism. We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance (134 S.Ct 2427, 2444).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to one commentator<\/a>, this statement \u201cappears to speak directly to EPA\u2019s proposal to regulate demand-side energy efficiency\u201d under the Clean Power Plan, given that the Clean Power Plan is \u201cexponentially broader in reach\u201d than the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (\u201cPSD\u201d) program at issue in UARG<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The assertion that UARG<\/em> raises questions about the legality of the Clean Power Plan rests on a misunderstanding of what the Clean Power Plan actually proposes to do. The Clean Power Plan does not propose to regulate demand-side energy efficiency or renewable energy; it proposes to regulate power plants. To be sure, the Plan\u2019s emission targets are based in part on the assumption that power plants will be able to contract with third parties to implement renewable energy and energy efficiency activities. But the Plan does not regulate<\/em> these third parties, any more than an emission guideline based on the availability of a particular pollution control technology could be said to regulate the manufacturer of the technology. The Clean Power Plan gives third parties the opportunity, but not the obligation, to contract with regulated entities to help reduce their pollution. In that respect, the Plan is no different from any other emission standard, such as that in Sierra Club v. Costle<\/em>, where the D.C. Circuit allowed an EPA regulation which assumed that utilities would contract with coal suppliers to ensure compliance.<\/p>\n

Properly understood, then, the Clean Power Plan does not implicate any of the questions that were at issue in UARG<\/em>. In UARG<\/em>, the Court concluded that EPA\u2019s interpretation of the PSD statute represented an unreasonable assertion of authority \u201cto regulate a significant portion of the American economy\u201d because this interpretation would impose pollution control requirements on \u201cmillions of small sources\u201d never before regulated under the Clean Air Act (134 S.Ct. at 2446). By contrast, the Clean Power Plan regulates a \u201crelative handful\u201d (2443) of sources belonging to a source category that has been regulated more extensively than any other under the Clean Air Act. Even assuming that \u201cCongress must speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance\u201d and that the regulation of power plants\u2019 carbon dioxide emissions implicates a question of \u201cvast economic and political significance\u201d (2444), it is beyond dispute that Congress has \u201cclearly\u201d granted EPA authority to regulate existing power-plant CO2<\/sub> emissions: the Supreme Court held precisely that in its 2011 decision in American Electric Power v. Connecticut<\/em>, and even pointed out that 111(d) was \u201cmost relevant\u201d to the question of regulating CO2<\/sub> in power plants (131 S. Ct. 2526, 2530). Ultimately, then, the contention that UARG <\/em>casts doubt upon EPA\u2019s authority to promulgate the Clean Power Plan is unpersuasive.<\/p>\n

Did this post pique your interest in the Clean Power Plan? Come back to our blog next week for the second part, which will address the (in)famous \u201celephant in a mousehole\u201d argument. In the meantime, check out the Symposium in our latest issue<\/a><\/em> for more analysis of <\/em>UARG and what it means for EPA\u2019s\u00a0 111(d) authority.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency (\u201cEPA\u201d) is expected to promulgate the final version of its Clean Power Plan, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-helr-online","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/seZkUb-2105","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}