A federal appeals court had questions Friday about the Biden administration’s attempt to cap off more than a decade of EPA efforts to rein in carbon pollution from power plants.
During three hours of oral argument, three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asked the agency whether its requirements for existing coal- and new gas-fired power plants are achievable and whether the rule comports with limits the Supreme Court imposed when it invalidated an Obama-era version of the regulation.
The court’s ruling — if it reaches one at all — may not matter much: The incoming Trump administration is expected to scrap the Biden regulation as part of its wide-ranging deregulatory agenda.
But the judges’ questions at least offered clues as to how the courts will view EPA’s responsibility to govern the nation’s second-largest source of planet-warming emissions.
