Today, we have some really good news! The Hill reports that the EPA’s 2019 “Affordable Clean Energy” rule (ACE rule) has been vacated (overturned)! This rule rolled back the health protections of the Clean Power Plan for coal plants.
In its article, The Hill quotes the ruling saying “promulgation of the ACE rule and its embedded repeal of the Clean Power Plan rested critically on a mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act.”
Because the Clean Power Plan was stayed in 2016, today’s ruling told the EPA to start over with its replacement of the Clean Power Plan. Greenwire reports that this ruling today gives the incoming administration a leg up when fighting climate change, because it can go straight to working on the new plan, instead of having to waste time dealing with the ACE rule.
The also signals good news about regulating greenhouse gases, stating that EPA’s recent approach to regulating greenhouse gases was illegal. Greenwire quotes this statement from the court ruling: “The question in this case is whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acted lawfully in adopting the 2019 Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE Rule), as a means of regulating power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gases. It did not…”
If you would like to read some legal opinion about the ACE rule and its legal rationale from the time period where it was announced, here is the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program’s analysis of the ACE rule.
