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Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in West Virginia vs. EPA, ruling that the Clean Air Act did not specifically authorize the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Now, any greenhouse gas regulations would need specific authorization from Congress. At issue was the Clean Power Plan (CPP), an EPA regulation promulgated by the Obama administration which mandated that existing coal and natural gas power plants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. There were many problems with this regulation, some of them were legal, and some of them were practical. Legally Speaking.. The...

It could be a coincidence—or it could foretell an historic Supreme Court term. The Court has now accepted two cases for this term that could threaten the essential legal underpinnings of the federal administrative state. The first is American Hospital Association v. Becerra, in which the plaintiff questions the Chevron doctrine—a rule fashioned by the Supreme Court itself in 1984 that requires lower federal courts to defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of their delegated authorities, where the statute is ambiguous and the agency’s decision is “reasonable.” Under this rubric, lower federal courts have given administrative agencies wide leeway to interpret...

This term the Supreme Court will hear four consolidated cases challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. That question will impact all electricity consumers, but the cases may have larger implications for the ever-expanding reach of the administrative state. The lead case—West Virginia v. EPA—questions the constitutionality of an ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act that, according to a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, gives the EPA broad power to regulate almost any part of the economy that produces greenhouse gases. Joining West Virginia are...

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to revoke California's authority to set its own vehicle greenhouse gas standards and declare that states are pre-empted from setting their own vehicle rules, three people briefed on the matter said on Thursday. According to Reuters, President Donald Trump met with senior officials on Thursday at the White House to discuss the administration's plan to divide its August 2018 proposal to rollback Obama era standards through 2025 and revoke California's waiver under the Clean Air Act to set state requirements for vehicles, the people said.

Just over a year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two different species to Washington. One was a French oak tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials quickly dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians. Ultimately, the tree died and the acorn has not fared much better. While our politicians may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore...

The White House on Monday rolled out a new plan that would allow higher blends of ethanol in vehicle fuels, amid concerns that the change could lead to more air pollution. The administration’s memo calls to extend the sale of E15 -- consisting of 15 percent of ethanol blended into gasoline -- year round. The fuel was blocked between June 1 and Sept. 15, as science shows burning ethanol in warmer temperature leads to heightened ground-level ozone pollution and smog. A senior White House official said the plan was part of President Trump’s free market plan. “This action is basically...

President Donald Trump is keeping a campaign promise to reduce the size of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the agency's recent employment numbers. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump spoke about dismantling the EPA, saying, "We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. We’re going to have little tidbits left but we’re going to take a tremendous amount out." Records show that in the first 18 months of the Trump administration, over 1,600 workers left the EPA and less than 400 were hired. This is an 8 percent decrease in the agency's employment size,...

Citing safety, the Trump administration on Thursday proposed rolling back car-mileage standards, backing away from years of government efforts to cut Americans’ trips to the gas station and reduce unhealthy, climate-changing tailpipe emissions. If the proposed rule becomes final, it could roil the auto industry as it prepares for new model years and weaken one of the federal government’s chief weapons against climate change — regulating emissions from cars and other vehicles. The result, opponents say, will be dirtier air and more pollution-related illness and death. The proposal itself estimates it could cost tens of thousands of jobs — auto...

Maryland is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to act on a petition requiring power plants in five upwind states to reduce pollution, the state’s attorney general and an official in Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration said Wednesday. The Hogan administration says 70 percent of Maryland’s ozone problem originates in upwind states. Maryland petitioned the EPA in November for a finding that 36 power plant units in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia are emitting air pollution affecting Maryland in violation of the Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor provision.” In January, the EPA issued a six-month extension to...

A federal judge in West Virginia has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reverse decades of regulatory practice and begin continually evaluating how many power plants and coal mining jobs are lost because of air pollution regulations. […] Murray Energy Corporation brought this challenge years ago, joined by most of the companies mining coal underground. Thirteen states support the suit, which blames the EPA for the coal industry’s declining fortunes. …

A federal judge ruled Friday that a lobbyist and former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official can testify for a coal company in its lawsuit against the agency. The EPA had sought to block Jeff Holmstead, who led the EPA’s air pollution office under then-President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, from appearing as an expert witness in Murray Energy Corp.’s case. The agency argued that Holmstead’s time at the EPA is a significant conflict of interest and his testimony would amount to little more than unreliable legal conclusions. The EPA “effectively argues that, because Mr. Holmstead once worked at...

Opponents of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change rule will have to wait three more months to argue their case in federal court. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Monday that oral arguments in the case over the Clean Power Plan will be held Sept. 27, rather than June 2, when they were originally scheduled earlier this year. Additionally, the case will be heard by a full panel of nine of the court’s judges. Chief Judge Merrick Garland, who President Obama has nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, has recused himself from all cases,...

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a clarification in response to claims that it is proposing a ban on converting road vehicles into race cars. The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) issued a statement on Monday indicating its intention to fight an EPA proposal to change the wording to the Clean Air Act as it applies to the installation of aftermarket parts that might circumvent stock emission-control devices. But in a separate statement released to the media today, the EPA said that the proposed change is merely intended to clean up the wording of an existing law: "People may use...

Shares in Volkswagen (VLKAF) crashed 20% Monday, wiping 16 billion euros ($18 billion) off the company's value after it was found to have misled U.S. regulators. Federal and state regulators said Friday that the German company cheated on environmental standards by programming some diesel-fueled cars to turn on emission controls only when being tested. Volkswagen, recently crowned the world's biggest carmaker by sales, also owns the Audi and Porsche brands. The software is installed in nearly 500,000 cars on U.S. roads, including some of its luxury-brand Audi cars. Regulators have ordered Volkswagen to recall the vehicles. The company said it...

The Obama administration on Friday directed Volkswagen to recall nearly a half-million cars, saying the automaker illegally installed software in its diesel-power cars to evade standards for reducing smog. The Environmental Protection Agency accused the German automaker of using software to detect when the car is undergoing its periodic state emissions testing. Only during such tests are the cars’ full emissions control systems turned on. During normal driving situations, the controls are turned off, allowing the cars to spew as much as 40 times as much pollution as allowed under the Clean Air Act, the E.P.A. said. “We expected better...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California officials say some 482,000 Volkswagen and Audi diesels were engineered to falsify their emissions for federal tests—a violation that opens the German automaker to a theoretical fine totaling $18 billion. The EPA and California Air Resources Board say the affected models had software in its computer engine controls that could sense exactly when it was being tested for emissions quality. At all other times, it would run the diesels in a different mode with illegal levels of pollution; for example, spewing up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide, a key component of smog,...

Germany’s VW AG has a mixed situation in the US – on one hand its luxury stablemate Audi is thriving and posting record sales each month, while on the other hand the mass-market brand is suffering. The company is a powerhouse in Europe, where it’s the largest automaker and thanks to China has also achieved the status of the second biggest carmaker in the world. Among the issues lie the fact that in the US the mass-market car brand VW has been sliding while the rest of the market is going up and the fact that Audi is indeed posting...

Green groups are fearful of Republicans winning the Senate majority in November, predicting it could lead to a “whittling away” of environmental regulations at the hands of GOP leaders. While environmental groups are spending millions of dollars trying to save the Senate for Democrats, they acknowledge the possibility that they could be forced to play defense against an all-Republican Congress in 2015. “I think that the wholesale repeal of environmental legislation, repealing [Environmental Protection Agency] greenhouse gas authority, things like that, that’s unlikely to happen,” said Ben Schreiber, director of the climate program at Friends of the Earth. “It is...

On Good Friday, President Obama made a bad call. The State Department announced that it would delay its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the Nebraska Supreme Court rules in a case involving the route. The administration insists the decision to punt has nothing to do with politics. Pretty much everyone else thinks otherwise. Obama, who is rarely reluctant to act unilaterally when it benefits him politically, and who regularly brags about his red-tape cutting, is paralyzed by perhaps the only big shovel-ready jobs project he's been presented with. He welcomes the Keystone red tape because he's trapped...

Seven months after being subpoenaed by Congress, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that her agency does not have - and cannot produce - all of the scientific data used for decades to justify numerous rules and regulations under the Clean Air Act.