A rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency would force power plants fueled by coal or natural gas to capture smokestack emissions or shut down.

Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

New limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric plants are the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the power sector, the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change. The rules are a key part of President Joe Biden’s pledge to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide by 2050.

The rule was among four separate measures targeting coal and natural gas plants that the EPA said would provide “regular certainty” to the power industry and encourage them to make investments to transition “to a clean energy economy.” They also include requirements to reduce toxic wastewater pollutants from coal-fired plants and to safely manage so-called coal ash in unlined storage ponds.

  • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
    121·
    6 months ago

    Sounds to me like it gives power to corporations to be exempt from regulations.

    No.

    What it does is instruct Federal Courts to defer to a controlling agencies interpretation of a Law, when reasonable, instead of the Court creating their own interpretation. Chevron Deference is what empowers the EPA to say “The Law didn’t address it but our opinion on this technical matter is that CO2 is a pollutant and we believe that gives us the authority to regulate it.”. A Federal Court will then test the reasonableness of that opinion and say “Yeah, that interpretation sounds reasonable to us.” or “Nah, your interpretation is clearly outside the boundaries of what Congress intended. You need to come up with a better opinion.”

    Without Chevron when the EPA shows up in Court and says “The Law didn’t address it but our opinion on this technical matter is that CO2 is a pollutant and we believe that gives us the authority to regulate it.” one Court may agree while 5 more say “The law didn’t directly address this therefore we aren’t going to allow this lawsuit to proceed.” or individual Courts may get farther into the weeds with things like “Well, the law didn’t address it but we feel that under X,Y, & Z circumstances you may have some ability to regulate this.”

    The idea behind this was actually a damn good one as it puts the Agency charged with regulating something, who should be EXPERTS in that thing, the ability to decide what should / shouldn’t be happening instead of a Judge who is almost certainly ignorant of that technical specialty.

    Ballotpedia has a write up for this that may be easier to understand than the Cornell one you linked to. I’ll quote part of it here.

    "Chevron deference, or Chevron doctrine, is an administrative law principle that compels federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that Congress delegated to the agency to administer. "

    In most cases most people WANT Chevron to exist because we WANT the specialty agencies, who should be filled with subject matter experts, making decisions related their specialty.

    There are a few instances, most spectacularly with the BATFE, where this has gone off the rails, but there’s little question that Chevron is a Net Good.