Today, American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle published an op-ed at National Review Online explaining why states should cease all efforts to comply with EPA’s carbon regulation. Below is an excerpt from the piece:
“The states should stop work on the EPA’s climate agenda”
By Thomas Pyle
2/25/16One of Justice Antonin Scalia’s last official acts may be among the most important of his distinguished career. Last week, he joined with four other justices to halt implementation of President Obama’s new carbon regulation for so long as it is under legal review — an unprecedented move to stay an unprecedented federal overreach into states’ energy decisions.
Titled by the administration the “Clean Power Plan,” the regulation would be one of the costliest ever, dramatically increasing electricity prices across the nation — all while producing essentially zero climate benefits, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own models.
Thanks to Justice Scalia and the four other justices who voted with him, Americans won the first battle against this reckless plan. But the fight is far from over. Even though the Supreme Court is not expected to issue a final ruling until at least 2017, the EPA is essentially flouting the stay order and encouraging states to continue developing their plans.
State officials — governors, legislators, regulatory agencies, public-utilities commissions, and utilities themselves — should reject the EPA’s offers of assistance. In fact, they should be issuing stop-work orders to prevent the regulation’s implementation until the courts have completed a full review.
That’s especially necessary with a regulation as harmful and unlawful as this one, which would force a dramatic shift in electricity generation over a period of just 15 years. NERA Economic Consulting predicts compliance costs of up to $39 billion per year during the regulation’s implementation. Most of this burden would fall on families through higher electricity bills and higher prices on the products they use each and every day. In fact, NERA estimates the regulation would hike energy bills in each of the 47 states subject to the regulation. Annual electricity price increases would reach as high as double digits across 41 states, with residents of 28 states facing yearly cost increases greater than 20 percent.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s stay, however, states can halt developing implementation plans at no risk to taxpayers. As EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy testified to Congress after the Court issued its stay, “Nothing is going to be implemented while the stay is in place.” In the unlikely event the regulation is eventually upheld, legal experts believe any new compliance deadline before mid-2018 would be extremely unlikely.
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AEA recently issued “Stop Work” orders to leaders in every state urging them to cease all efforts to comply with EPA’s unlawful regulation. Learn more about this initiative at www.StopWorkNow.org.
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