Kentucky AG wants EPA’s power reviewed

(The Center Square) – In a case he said would chart the future of the coal industry, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court imploring the panel to review a case that would determine the power the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can yield.

The brief is in support of a petition written in late April by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. In that filing, Morrisey asked the nation’s top court to overturn a District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals decision that said the EPA can mandate strict standards for coal and natural gas power plants.

Those standards stem from the Clean Power Plan, a policy from the Obama Administration that assigned carbon emission reduction goals for each state.

Two years after the CPP was unveiled, then-President Trump issued an executive order calling for the EPA to review the plan, and eventually then EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced it would be repealed. However, this past January, the D.C. Circuit issued its ruling that rejected the Trump plan.

Cameron in his brief said the case is about who holds the responsibility to set climate change policy. He said the EPA can only act if Congress gives it that mandate.

“Agency rulemaking cannot be a substitute for Congressional legislative action,” Cameron argued. “That Congress has been unable or unwilling to pass climate-change legislation does not mean the EPA may make climate-change policy in its stead.”

Like West Virginia, coal plays a major role in Kentucky’s economy and power supply, although that presence is waning. State data shows that West Virginia had more coal jobs than Kentucky in 2016, but the number of jobs had gone from more than 18,000 in 2009 to just 6,612 in 2016.

Cameron also said that the EPA directives would drive up energy costs in some of the country’s poorest regions.

“And all this will happen without allowing citizens from Kentucky and other coal-producing states, through their elected representatives, to have a say in the matter.,” Cameron wrote. “For these reasons, Kentucky has a strong interest in ensuring that a critical component of the nation’s power sector is not harmed because of the D.C. Circuit’s misinterpretation of EPA authority.”

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