Legal Challenges to the Clean Power Plan
EPA’s Authority Under the Clean Air Act
On August 3, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its controversial Clean Power Plan (CPP) to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing fossil-fuel-fired power plants, finalizing a rule proposed by the agency in June 2014. This summarizes the main legal aspects of the controversy over EPA’s authority and interpretation of the relevant statutes, particularly Clean Air Act (CAA) Section 111(d), under which EPA issued the CPP. The CPP calls on States to submit plans to EPA that achieve State-specific, rate-based, or mass-based goals for CO2 emission reductions from affected electric generating units: existing power plants that use coal,…
