Investor Presentaiton
INTRODUCTION
Seven years ago, the Environmental Protection
Agency tried to name itself the country's central energy
planning authority by reshaping the power grids and
seizing control over electricity production nationwide.
Through reverse-engineered performance standards and
a convoluted reading of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air
Act, EPA would have forced certain power plant owners
to slash hours, close their facilities, or subsidize
competitors in the renewable-energy industry. States
would have had to oversee these transformations, and
they and their residents would have borne the heavy costs
of lost generation and jobs. EPA thus weaponized a
statute intended to improve pollution controls at regulated
facilities, using it to bankrupt industries that the agency
disfavored instead.
EPA reconsidered a few years after conceiving this
idea and found that it did not have statutory power to
launch an effort of that scale. The D.C. Circuit, however,
held that Section 111 did not justify that return to
restraint. Save for a few general factors EPA was to take
into account, the lower court told EPA it has "no limits"
on the emission-related measures it can impose―on any
economic sector or almost any actor.
EPA does not have this kind of "roving commission to
achieve pure air or some other laudable goal,” Michigan
v. EPA, 268 F.3d 1075, 1084 (D.C. Cir. 2001). But the
decision below threatens to give it one. First, it allows
EPA to resolve questions of vast political and economic
importance without a clear textual statement that
Congress wanted it to do so. Second, it strips traditional
state authority with-again-no clear statement that
Congress agreed. Third, it ignores statutory constraints
that limit EPA to measures that regulated facilities canView entire presentation