Rescission Of Carbon Emissions Standards For Power Plants: The Litigation Begins

In what may be a world record for turnaround time, the litigation has already begun over the recent rescission by EPA of its carbon emission standards for fossil-fuel fired power plants.

As reported here on September 17, on that date the EPA finalized its rescission of what were called its “Carbon Pollution Standards” for electric power plants.  (EPA’s September 17 action did not rescind all of the Carbon Pollution Standards for power plants, but only those for existing power plants and major overhauls of existing plants; the standards for new plants remain in effect for now, although in its rescission action EPA gave strong hints that those will also soon be ended.). By the end of that very day, September 17, a Petition had been filed in the DC Circuit seeking review of the regulatory action.  Here is a copy of the Petition.  The Petitioners are the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Petition is a short two-page document that simply asks for “review” of EPA’s action, and does not say anything about the grounds for the request.  To learn the basis for the request, we must look to the press releases issued by the various petitioning organizations.  Those contain statements from representatives of the Petitioners, mostly about imaginary threats to “health” from this thing they call “climate pollution.”  But one thing that none of the Petitioners’ representatives do in their statements is address the grounds set forth by EPA for the rescission.