FILE – Emissions rise from the smokestacks at the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant as the suns sets, near Emmett, Kan., Sept. 18, 2021. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, as a government lawyer argued that the Environmental Protection Agency should be allowed to continue enforcing its anti-air-pollution “good neighbor” rule. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — West Virginia is co-leading a group of 25 states in a lawsuit over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently-released new rule on existing coal-, natural gas- and oil-fired power plants.
The rule would require such plants to reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to levels that critics say could lead them to shut down, citing concerns that the carbon capture technology required to stay within emissions limits is not yet ready to be deployed at the scale it would need to be. West Virginia politicians, including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R), have challenged the rule since a draft was released last year.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in West Virginia v. EPA.
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a press release Thursday that Congress still hasn’t authorized the EPA to make such regulations.
“This rule strips the states of important discretion while using technologies that don’t work in the real world—this administration packaged this rule with several other rules aimed at destroying traditional energy providers,” Morrisey said in the release. “We are confident we will once again prevail in court against this rogue agency.”
Morrisey said West Virginia will be filing a motion to stay the rule “as soon as possible.”
Locally, the Harrison Power Station in Haywood, the American Bituminous/Perennial Power plant in Grant Town, and the Fort Martin Power Station and Longview Power plant in Maidsville, are coal-powered.
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