Nick Pope
Contributor
The Supreme Court declined to block two key Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on Friday in a blow to red states and industry interests challenging the rules.
The court did not intervene to pause the EPA’s rules tightening limits for mercury in coal-fired power plant emissions and methane generated by oil and gas production, meaning that the rules are clear to take effect while the challengers’ litigation works its way through lower courts, according to Reuters. The organizations and states that filed the emergency appeals to the Supreme Court have argued that the agency overstepped its legal authority in issuing the regulations under the Clean Air Act and that EPA is depriving states of their ability to establish their own emissions rules.
The mercury regulations would reduce the amount of toxic metals that all coal-fired power plants are allowed to emit by 67% and would tighten limits on lignite coal plants’ mercury emissions by 70%, according to Reuters. Challengers — which include oil and gas developers, mining companies and groups focused on power markets — argued that the EPA overreached in issuing the new limits and that the regulation will jeopardize America’s energy reliability by effectively forcing the premature retirement of coal-fired power plants. (RELATED: Officials Told Biden’s EPA That Its Aggressive Green Power Plant Scheme Has Serious Flaws, Docs Show)
‘Inevitable And Foreseeable’: Grid Operators Beg Court To Nix EPA Rules To Save Electricity System From Collapsehttps://t.co/0LAt8gHVSN
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 18, 2024
The methane rules, which also pertain to a type of emissions called “volatile organic compounds,” are designed to limit flaring, or burning off extra methane during the process of producing oil and gas, according to Reuters. The rules would also require developers to more closely monitor potential methane leaks from their oil and gas infrastructure, as well as establish a methane leak reporting program specifically for methane “super-polluters.”
“EPA is pleased that the Supreme Court has denied the applications for a stay of the revised Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS),” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Agency believes the revised MATS rule, which will ensure that the nation’s coal-fired power plants meet up-to-date standards for hazardous air pollutants that reflect the latest advancements in pollution control technologies, is firmly grounded in its Clean Air Act authority.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined in July and August to temporarily block the two rules while it reviews them, according to Reuters.
The Supreme Court has taken action to block major regulatory moves by the EPA in recent years, such as its landmark 2022 ruling in West Virginia v. EPA that vacated the agency’s 2014 “Clean Power Plan” to reshape the American power grid to heavily rely on green energy instead of fossil fuels.
In June, the court also struck down “Chevron deference,” a precedent that formerly allowed agencies like the EPA broad discretion to interpret ambiguous statutes. That particular ruling is already teeing up challenges to some of the most aggressive regulatory actions taken to date by the Biden-Harris EPA.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from the EPA.
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While both actions by Biden/Harris are clear violations of WV v EPA, the Court is playing “political question”, and waiting for the election to overturn both rules (or not).
Which means that if Trump is not elected, USA will have been strangled of energy by the time another election is due….
While I disagree with the validity of the regulations in question, didn’t the court decide to let the normal challenge process play out?
Yes
No – SCOTUS is waiting on the lower courts to complete their process of reviewing the rules. The litigation has not been dismissed or ruled on either way. Apparently the justices were not so concerned with immediate irreparable harm to use the emergency stay process. This is by no means an indication on how the court will ultimately rule on the case.
Surely the governing criterion is “How many people are killed or harmed by Mercury in these materials?”
One search for Mercury poisoning deaths and illness in the US gave 2022 data as 30 moderate cases, 9 serious cases and zero deaths. The sources of Mercury did not include coal ash. The second search gave sources of Mercury poisoning, but did not include coal ash. It did include Mercury amalgam as used for filling teeth in millions of mouths of thankful people, still alive to express gratitude.
The goalposts are changing. If we follow the example of Lead, the condemnation comes not from deaths from Lead poisoning, about 15 a year in the US, mainly from moonshine stills with Lead solder. It comes from the analysis of Lead in the blood of people. Some bureaucrats have created a blood Lead level above which you or I could be counted as a victim of Lead poisoning.
I foresee the same subjective, unscientific treatment coming for Mercury. They could be classing people as victims of Mercury poisoning from blood Mercury measurements.
Given that one peer-reviewed paper by Lanphear in The Lancet has already claimed the possibility of 400,000 deaths per annum in the US from Lead poisoning now, imagine the scope for Mercury!
This EPA approved circus is a beautiful example of poor science that rewards the creative alarmist while ignoring what the proper numbers tell us.
Geoff S
400,000 yearly, in just 750 years everyone in the US will be dead from lead poisoning
If Trump is elected to the presidency, he will clean the EPA house because he said that global warming and climate change is a hoax. He should terminate “donations” to the UNFCCC, the UN COP, and the IPCC.
I can’t wait for winter to come. Hopefully, Mother Nature will slaps some sense into the greenie wackos.
If Kamala Harris is elected, maybe the coal fired power stations should all stop generating saying that they can’t meet the new requirements. Then, when there is a blackout, the govt & media won’t be able to blame coal like they do now when wind and solar fail. Gas might cop it, though – serve them right for playing the game against coal in their own self interest.
Meanwhile power companies and regional transmission organizations in charge of supply power and preventing blackouts are panicking because they need every existing power plant PLUS even more new plants to serve AI and EV power needs.
The interesting thing about the MATS Rule is it decreases the allowable particulate emissions from a coal plant to 1/3 of the current limit. No, not by 1/3 but to 1/3. They have also changed the allowable ways of monitoring that particulate, which is a double whammy.
They are using particulate emissions as a proxy instead of monitoring actual mercury.
This is messed up.
Methane, 1.9 ppm.
The reason the concentration of methane in air is so low is due to discharges of lightning which initiates it combustion. There are thousands of lighting discharges every day, especially in the tropics.
Methane is slightly soluble in water. One liter of ice cold water can contain 35 mls of methane. That is not very much, but the oceans are very large.
We really do not have to worry about methane.
Thanks for that
My pleasure and glad to be helpful.
There are many natural sources of methane such as swamps, bogs, muskegs, decaying vegetation, wild and domestic ruminate animals, termites and especially tropical and African termites.
How much of the methane in the air is due to natural sources? I doubt that the EPA knows. I also doubt that they can measure the concentration of methane to +/- a ppb.
NASA reports the concentration of methane as 1,926 pbbv. They did this because it makes methane look like a really “menacing molecule”.
When the gas tanks of automobiles are filled with gasoline, butane from
the headspace is displaced into the air. Some filling nozzles have a vapor recovery system such as required in some areas of California. Butane is a greenhouse gas and reacts with ozone to from smog.
You left out human beings in your list of methane sources.
In addition to humans, there are pet dogs and cats. Some more wild animals are rats, mice, bears, mountain lions, wolves, seals, birds, and maybe some insects like caterpillars that eat vegetation.
We should keep all of this secret otherwise the EPA will start up new methane monitoring program costing millions.
Lawfare. Using your laws as weapons against you.
…is not the same as dismissing the cases, which remain in the lower courts. It also doesn’t prevent the states from requesting another stay, if need be.
It’s an interesting picture on this post. I thought Justice was supposed to be blind (blindfolded).
Surprised they did not shroud her chest.
The morality police must have been on a donut break.
Hmmm.
Yes, Justice is usually shown as a woman and is sometimes topless. Apparently they drew her as topless, then decided to cover her up.
The Demoncrat appointed judges definitely are not blindfolded.
I think this temporary decision is wise. Even if don’t like it.
The court refused a preliminary injunction, meaning the suit proceeds thru the courts. In other words, placing an outer limit on Wv. V EPAand Chevron. This is wise. As we are in uncharted territory. Let it play out in lower courts, and then we will see. May will depend on how mercury and MATS limits are interpreted.
Win the war, not every skirmish in every battle.
Yes, that is what I thought to let the lower courts do their part to establish decisions that can be addressed later the injunction was not going to solve anything.
Isn’t rules on mercury and methane part of what the EPA was supposedly about (unlike CO2)?