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A US federal appeals court has struck down the plan of the Trump administration to relax restrictions on power plant greenhouse emissions. A US court of appeals said the plan approved by the EPA in 2019 and was a mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act, and the EPA fundamentally has misconceived the law. It would allow US President Joe Biden to create tougher laws governing power plant pollution with the current EPA rules invalidated. Biden administration has planned to create tougher laws governing power plant pollution. Point to be noted that the lawsuit was filed in August 2019 by 22 state attorneys general and 8 local governments. The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James issued a statement and said, “This Dirty Power rule served to support dirty and expensive coal power plants, undercut clean and sustainable electricity, and left New Yorkers and all other Americans to foot the bill”.

The current EPA spokesperson Molly Block also expressed disappointment with the decision and said, “It risks injecting more uncertainty at a time when the nation needs regulatory stability”. It is noteworthy that the court decision effectively ends the EPA’s efforts to weaken US climate change policies after the Trump Administration brought the US out of the Paris climate agreement. The United States formally exited the agreement in November 2020, and since Joe Biden pledged to rejoin it the day he’s inaugurated. The US will have only been a non-party to the accord for about two and half months. The administration of Donald Trump’s EPA lawyers argued that the federal government doesn’t have the authority to set national restrictions on emissions or force states to do so.

The judges ruled and said, “The EPA may not shirk its responsibility by imagining new limitations that the plain language of the statute does not clearly require”. Point to be noted that the new rules never went into effect, as the Supreme Court said in 2016 that states didn’t need to comply until all lawsuits were resolved. The court didn’t go all the way with its decision, as it failed to reinstate a 2015 Obama administration rule that forced utilities to move toward renewable energy sources. Now, the Biden administration will be able to enact similar rules without waiting for a legal battle over the Trump regulations. Biden promised during his presidential campaign to cut emissions from the power sector by 32% (compared to 2005 levels) by 2030.