The EPA Just Quietly Got Stronger – The Atlantic

Source: The EPA Just Quietly Got Stronger – The Atlantic

…In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide counted as an air pollutant, and that, if the EPA decided that CO₂ harmed human health and the environment, it could regulate CO₂ under the Clean Air Act. That ruling—and the EPA’s official determination, a few years later, that CO₂ is dangerous—has anchored the agency’s climate regulations on cars and trucks, and its proposed rules for the power grid.

But then in June, the Court circumscribed some of the EPA’s authority over the power grid. Conservative justices have harped on the fact that Congress has never clearly delegated the power to regulate greenhouse gases to the EPA.

Now it has. The IRA repeatedly defines greenhouse gas as a form of air pollution. It amends several sections of the Clean Air Act to define “greenhouse gas” as encompassing “the air pollutants carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.” In another section, it grants money under the Clean Air Act for any project that “reduces or avoids greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of air pollution.”

…Congress has now clearly spoken: Carbon dioxide is a form of air pollution. And though this will not undo this year’s ruling, it buttresses the EPA’s underlying legal authority to regulate climate pollution.

The whole point of the IRA is that it brings down the cost of clean energy. It makes renewables cheaper, it makes nuclear power cheaper, and, as I wrote last week, it even makes the technologies that we’ll need to fight climate change in the 2030s cheaper. So far, most commentary on the law has focused on the immediate effects of that shift, and on how the law’s new incentives will reduce emissions simply by driving turnover in the energy system. But in the weeks and years to come, the secondary effects could become more important. Now that the IRA has passed, it will be easier for states and cities to pursue aggressive climate policy, and it will be simpler for companies to cut their emissions faster than would otherwise be economical.