The US Supreme Court ends EPA mandate to curb emissions from power plants

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had overstepped the authority Congress gave it to limit CO₂ emissions at power plants. Specifically, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States considered it was “highly unlikely” that Congress would leave the amount of coal-based generation to the discretion of the EPA. The court overturned a 2021 judgment by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had declared unconstitutional the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which imposed limits on a Clean Air Act provision called Section 111 that provides the EPA authority to regulate emissions from existing power plants.

In 2016, the Supreme Court stopped the implementation of the Clean Power Plan mandating major reductions in CO₂ emissions from the power sector, which used Section 111 to encourage a power generation shift from coal to cleaner energy sources, without ruling on its lawfulness. Despite a 16% rebound in 2021 to 997 TWh, coal-fired generation in the United States declined on average by 5.6%/year since 2010. Between 2010 and 2020, the country's coal-fired capacity declined by more than 95 GW.