President Barack Obama's 15-year plan to cut power plant carbon dioxide emissions and steer the U.S. toward renewable energy sources is under legal attack again.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency regulatory package known as the Clean Power Plan officially took effect Friday. It was immediately challenged by 24 states, led by West Virginia and including Arkansas, in a U.S. appeals court filing in Washington, D.C. Oklahoma filed a separate petition.
It's at least the third time the initiative has come under legal fire. Earlier challenges were rejected by federal judges as premature because the measure hadn't been published. The U.S. government no longer has that defense, leaving the regulations open to attack.
The first-ever national standards for addressing power plant carbon pollution, the Clean Power Plan aims by 2030 to reduce those emissions 32 percent below where they were in 2005. The rules require states and utilities to use less coal and more solar power, wind power and natural gas.
States are required to submit their initial plans for meeting those objectives by Sept. 6, 2016. Final plans must be submitted two years later.
The government has touted the initiative as "fair, flexible and designed to strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy." Opponents have attacked it as an abuse of federal power that violates existing law and threatens the reliability of the power grid.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Friday issued a statement that described the new EPA standards as a "heavy-handed" overreach by the federal government.
Rutledge contends that the increased regulations imposed by the new rule would hurt Arkansas consumers, who rely on coal-burning power plants for more than half of their energy.
"This unlawful rule will have serious and significant consequences," Rutledge wrote. "The impact will be felt in the pocketbooks of utility ratepayers. These increased costs will have a direct impact on the State's ability to grow good-paying jobs with fair, reasonable electric rates."
Glen Hooks, the head of the Arkansas chapter of the environmental group, the Sierra Club, issued a statement applauding the new rule, saying it will benefit the local economy and the health of Arkansans.
"While Arkansas' utilities, state agencies, and environmental groups are already working to reduce carbon pollution, Attorney General Rutledge is engaged in yet another attack on clean air protections," Hooks wrote. "Endless and expensive legal fights against clean air are not what we should get from our Attorney General, but it's sadly what we've come to expect."
An Entergy Arkansas official e-mailed a statement saying that the company is still looking at how the rule could affect stakeholders and consumers alike and "is still considering its litigation options." Entergy Arkansas operates coal-fired plants in Independence and Jefferson counties.
Sandra Byrd, a spokesman for the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., said her company will not be involved in any legal challenges and it is focused on working with state energy and environmental regulators to put together a plan for complying with the new rules. The company owns or leases portions of four coal plants.
Announced by Obama and the EPA on Aug. 3, the Clean Power Plan is one of several conservation measures unveiled by the administration that faced immediate legal opposition.
"This is the most far-reaching energy regulation in the nation's history," Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in August, when he led a 15-state effort to put those earliest deadlines on hold.
The federal appeals court in Washington turned back that effort last month. The same court in June rejected earlier challenges by West Virginia and Murray Energy Corp., a coal company based in St. Clairsville, Ohio.
A federal appeals court in Cincinnati put on hold the president's plan to expand environmental protection of U.S. streams and wetlands after 18 states sued. An effort to regulate hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was blocked by a federal judge in Casper, Wyo. The U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management lacked congressional authorization to impose those rules, the judge said.
Business on 10/24/2015