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"The major questions doctrine didn't exist until fairly recently, but in the last year or so, the Supreme Court has made it a regular part of its anti-regulatory arsenal,” said Richard Revesz. “As a result, I am sure that enterprising attorneys general for red states will use it to challenge climate regulations, environmental regulations and all kinds of other regulations."

Despite the US Supreme Court's ruling against the EPA, the agency can still stimulate power sector CO2 abatement in more creative ways. Dena Adler, a research scholar at the New York University School of Law, said, “[The EPA] can consider how to make heat rate improvements more ambitious and look toward what is possible with other techniques such as co-firing and carbon capture and sequestration."

The "generation shifting" approach, which the Supreme Court said the EPA did not have, is "environmentally effective, economically efficient, and supported by power companies", said Dena Adler, a research scholar at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University's School of Law. "While this is an unwelcome and unnecessary setback for addressing the urgent climate crisis, EPA still retains the authority, and an obligation, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, including from the power sector," she told China Daily.

The "major questions" doctrine is an attempt to rein in what the court sees as regulatory overreach. The problem is the court has yet to define exactly what counts as a major question, said Richard Revesz, an environmental professor at New York University Law School. "They presented the doctrine in a kind of amorphous and unbounded way," he said. "And we just don't know what this means for the next EPA regulation or the next regulation by any other agency."

Following the West Virginia v. EPA ruling last Thursday, the agency “still has a number of pathways to do its job to protect public health and the environment, including by limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants,” Dena Adler, a research scholar at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, told The Hill in an email. But she and other sources agreed there are important limitations now for the EPA that weren’t there before. The ruling specifically applies to the EPA’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which had a goal of so-called generation-shifting, or accelerating the shift from coal-fired power to renewable energy and natural gas.“That’s a significant constraint, because it was the EPA’s first choice for a reason,” said Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity. “It reflects how the power grid actually operates and the fact that electricity is fungible.” 

“While this is a setback for addressing the climate crisis, EPA still retains the authority, and an obligation, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, including from the power sector,” Adler said in an email. Besides increasing the efficiency of power plants through heat rate improvements, the EPA can look to other ways to lower carbon emissions such as co-firing with low-carbon fuels and carbon capture and sequestration, according to Adler.

 Adler warned that the case could be the “canary in the regulatory coal mine” because the court relied on the little-used “major questions doctrine” to reach its conclusion that EPA had veered beyond its congressionally approved instructions. Adler warned that applying the major questions legal theory more broadly — as conservative judges on the court have increasingly done to block regulatory initiatives — “will create more uncertainty for agencies and the entities that they regulate.”

Speaking of the West Virginia v. EPA ruling, Richard Revesz said, "It's basically turning on its head decades of accepted law involving the relationship between congress and administrative agencies."

Yesterday's West Virginia v EPA ruling marked a shift in the way the Supreme Court reviews an agency's authority by focusing more attention on the major questions doctrine, said Max Sarinsky, a professor at the New York University School of Law. "It's inviting courts to apply particular scrutiny and skepticism" when reviewing regulations, Sarinsky said.

While the Supreme Court's recent ruling hinders the Biden administration's ability to battle climate change, the ruling could also affect other agencies, according to Jack Lienke, the Regulatory Policy Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. (Segment begins at 3:55).