EPA’s Clean Power Plan 2.0: A Green Disaster for America

November 9, 2023

President Biden’s climate change agenda is a travesty. Unfortunately, there’s more to come. In May, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) effectively proposed to close power plants that keep electricity flowing affordably and reliably. As a key part of Biden’s promise of a “zero-carbon” power grid by 2035, EPA’s plan will undermine the stability of the grid, raise electricity prices for consumers, and compromise America’s energy security.

Biden’s EPA is following the Obama Administration’s brazen attempt to control the nation’s electric grid using an obscure and rarely invoked authority under the Clean Air Act. The plan is to require emissions controls that are commercially unavailable at-scale and technologi- cally infeasible for power plants that use coal and natural gas.

Last year, the Supreme Court found that the Obama EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” violated the Clean Air Act, expressly invoking for the first time the “major questions doctrine,”

according to which issues of major political and economic significance can only be addressed by executive branch agency rules if Congress has clearly and explicitly authorized them to do so. Biden’s EPA is thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court, having issued a proposed rule similar to the scope and ambition of the Obama Clean Power Plan.

While its particulars may differ, the intent of the Biden proposal is the same: assume federal control of the dials of electricity generation, turning them in directions that favor specific renewable energy such as wind and solar, and penalize fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal. Congress never authorized this, as the Supreme Court rightly concluded, but Biden’s EPA persists as if no one has spoken a word about it. Meanwhile, consumers could end up paying hundreds of billions of dollars for this regulatory nightmare.

Elections have consequences, as the saying goes—and the 2024 elections may determine the fate of Biden’s Clean Power Plan 2.0. Or, if past is prologue, the Supreme Court could accomplish the same thing. Either way, the hope is that Biden’s climate zealotry crashes against a political and legal brick wall.