Unfortunately , the Clean Air Act ' s authority over power plant greenhouse gas emissions is weak , contested and highly inefficient , relying on antiquated command-and-control mechanisms rather than the kind of efficient and flexible market-based mechanisms that were adopted for other pollutants in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments . And the U . S . Supreme Court ' s 2022 decision in West Virginia v . EPA raised several issues that remain highly relevant to the latest rule .
President Joe Biden ' s EPA tried to avoid one of the problematic elements of President Barack Obama ' s Clean Power Plan — mandating a shift from coal-fired generation to renewables . But other aspects of the EPA ' s new final rule — chiefly , its assertion that carbon capture technologies have been " adequately demonstrated ," and its probable collision with the major questions doctrine articulated in West Virginia v . EPA — are likely to be fatal flaws .
With the court now poised to modify the long-standing Chevron doctrine in the coming months , deference to the EPA on these issues seems implausible .
Both parties would like to believe they ' re winning , but the opposite is true : On our current trajectory , electricity in America will be less abundant , less reliable , more expensive and more generative of emissions than necessary . Well-designed , bipartisan legislation could enable a more efficient , more reliable modernization of the sector that would serve the broad range of shared energy policy goals .
Skepticism about the prospects for rational , nonpartisan policymaking is understandable . Gridlock is real — but it need not be permanent . Between 2020 and 2022 , several bills to establish a clean energy standard were introduced in Congress , including proposals from Rep . Frank Pallone , D-N . J ., Rep . Diane DeGette , D-Colo ., Rep . Ben Ray Lujan , D-N . M ., and Sen . Tina Smith , D-Minn .
These efforts were abandoned when Democrats shifted their focus to passing the Inflation Reduction Act — which , as a budgetary measure , could not establish new regulatory standards . The postenactment flush of enthusiasm for the IRA meant that the need for emissions standards was soon forgotten .
But two years later , with the push for permitting reform stalled and projections for deep emissions reductions looking doubtful , it ' s time to revisit these questions .
With divided government or , at a minimum , the filibuster ' s constraint on the horizon in the coming years , it ' s worth considering a bipartisan clean energy standard proposal , the Clean Energy Future through Innovation Act , cosponsored by Reps . David McKinley , R-W . Va ., and Kurt Schrader , D-Ore ., in 2021 .
This proposal had some unique features that gave it bipartisan appeal . It gave utilities sufficient lead time and an aggressive but economically feasible pathway for reducing emissions , and it included features , such as a safety valve price for credits , that would control costs .[ 1 ]
It also provided relief from redundant regulations , whereas other clean energy standard proposals left the federal code cluttered with duplicative , inefficient regulatory tools . In fact , the prospect of regulatory relief from the cumbersome , inefficient Clean Air Act programs should be sufficient incentive for states to participate in a federal clean energy standard program — especially if it provides access to expedited permitting for compliant projects .