On June 30, the Supreme Court in West Virginia et al. vs. Environmental Protection Agency et al. ruled that the EPA overstepped its Congressional authority under the Clean Air Act in attempting to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under its Affordable Clean Energy rule.

This is a serious setback for efforts to address the climate crisis. The problem is that the Clean Air Act, originally passed in 1970 and amended in 1977 and 1990, was not setup to address greenhouse gas control, a problem that only came into focus in the 1990s and is written in an overly prescriptive manner giving the EPA little flexibility.

When President Obama’s EPA wrote the Clean Power Plan in 2015, which after court challenges was replaced by the Affordable Clean Energy Rule in 2019, utilities were given flexibility to find least-cost solutions for lowering carbon emissions.

But the Supreme Court said not so fast because such flexibility was not found in section 111 of the Clean Air Act, the basis for these rules.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix: Congress can pass an amendment to the Clean Air Act that adds a new subsection to 111 that grants EPA that more flexible authority to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

An even better solution is for Congress to finally approve a price for greenhouse gas emissions to reflect their damages to the environment and human health, something the Citizens’ Climate Lobby has been fighting for over 15 years.

Barry Solomon

Waikapu