Last week, the administration acted on its plan to repeal the EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions. The 2009 endangerment finding underpinned many EPA rules related to GHG emissions. This includes the emissions requirements for vehicles and power plants. A recent article from the World Resources Institute discusses the implications:
“The impact is sweeping. The endangerment finding underpinned regulations across multiple sectors, including emissions limits for consumer vehicles, commercial vehicles and heavy-duty trucks, standards for coal-fired and natural gas power plants, and federal sustainability requirements that shape government procurement and broader market behavior… In practical terms, without the endangerment finding, regulating greenhouse gas emissions is no longer a legal requirement. The science hasn’t changed, but the obligation to act on it has been removed.”
This repeal does not come as a surprise. It has been a long-standing goal of the administration. Additionally, major legal challenges to the rescission will emerge once the final rule is published. Early litigation challenging the flimsy science of the administration’s “climate working group” yielded promising results. This may indicate that rescinding the endangerment finding poses a greater legal challenge than the administration expects. We’ll be covering the fallout of the rescission and the inevitable litigation as it works its way through the court system. Early legal battles will largely center on whether the rescission can stand while legal challenges play out, or if the courts will issue a hold, leaving the endangerment finding in place pending the outcome of litigation.
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