The nation’s top environmental agency is urging a federal appeals court to rebuff calls from industry and Republican state attorneys general to block new controls on power plant emissions.
EPA’s power plant rule — which targets greenhouse gases from existing coal and new gas-fired power plants — relies heavily on carbon capture and storage technology to rein in the nation’s second-largest source of planet-warming pollution.
Republican critics say it’s too much, too fast, but EPA in a brief filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disputed challengers’ claims that the technology is not yet ready to be used at the scale required by the rule. The agency said the regulation is in line with directives from legislators.
“Promoting such controls comports with Congress’s recent decision to support, through tax incentives and infrastructure investment, the widespread adoption of this very same demonstrated technology,” attorneys for EPA wrote in the brief.
