A half-dozen environmental groups are suing to overturn recently updated Clean Air Act regulations for new natural-gas-fired power plants.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by the Sierra Club, Clean Wisconsin and four other organizations. It challenges the New Source Performance Standards for releases of smog-forming nitrogen oxides from new plant turbines.
The final version of those standards, released by the Trump administration in January, is much weaker than the draft proposed by EPA two years ago during President Joe Biden’s tenure. At the time, the agency had projected that the draft would cut annual NOx releases by almost 2,700 tons in 2032. The reductions expected by that point under the Trump requirements are up to about 300 tons.
The final rule also marked the debut of EPA’s new policy under President Donald Trump to stop calculating in dollar terms the predicted health benefits of new regulations resulting from cuts in airborne reductions in ozone or the fine particles dubbed soot.
