Court dumps Trump ‘Affordable Clean Energy’ plan

Biden’s EPA will rewrite the plan for cutting carbon emissions from power plants, which it already planned to do

An appeals court on Tuesday vacated the Trump administration’s primary environmental regulation for electric utilities, sending it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and accusing the agency of “fundamentally” misunderstanding the law.

The court directed EPA to start over with a new plan to regulate greenhouse emissions under federal law. The agency is required to regulate air pollutants, including greenhouse gases, though the incoming Biden administration had said it would strengthen domestic carbon regulations on the books even before Tuesday’s ruling.

Issued unanimously by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the ruling is a blow to President Donald Trump on his final full day in office and provides President-elect Joe Biden a legal mandate to draft a new rule to tackle domestic greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Continue reading.