CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Tuesday said he is leading a 23-state federal lawsuit seeking to eliminate the U.S. EPA's new standards that would prohibit the construction of new coal-fired power plants.
Morrisey and the other state AGs claim the Environmental Protection Agency’s new source performance standards (NSPS) exceed the agency's legal authority under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act in finalizing emissions standards. That, Morrisey claims, will jeopardize West Virginia’s energy needs as well as good-paying coal jobs here and nationwide.
The petition was filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
Morrisey said the NSPS rule relies upon experimental technology that is extremely expensive and unproven on a commercial scale in the United States.
“This gamble proves far too costly for West Virginia,” Morrisey said in a statement. “EPA cannot rely on experimental and costly technology that threatens hard-working West Virginians whose livelihoods are dependent upon the coal industry.”
Morrisey says the lawsuit also challenges the legal underpinning of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which he says has led many of these same states in challenging in federal court last month.
The Clean Power Plan is intended to reduce or eliminate coal-based energy generation by reducing carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants by an average of 32 percent by 2030.
“These unlawful policies cannot go forward,” Morrisey said. “Not only will EPA’s rules threaten good-paying jobs and small business throughout West Virginia, this unilateral action is unlawful.”
Other states joining West Virginia in the lawsuit are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Other petitioners are the Arizona Corporation Commission, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
Last month, Morrisey led a coalition of 23 other states in a lawsuit seeking to strike down the Clean Power Plan, saying the EPA rule unlawfully expands the federal government’s regulatory power over electricity production and consumption in nearly every state.
