CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a 21-state effort to help shape the potential creation of any new regulation that would effectively replace the so-called Clean Power Plan.
The letter was sent March 5 as part of a public comment period set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“The Power Plan imposes massive costs on consumers and the power sector, invades a traditional area of state responsibility, and does not adequately ensure the national interest in affordable, reliable electricity, including from coal generation,” Morrisey wrote. “EPA must ensure that any new rule — unlike the Power Plan — hews to the text of the (Clean Air Act) and preserves the States’ role in managing energy generation.”
Morrisey led an effort that helped defeat the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which he says would have devastated West Virginia’s economy. He challenged the plan the day it was published and led the states’ legal efforts all the way to the Supreme Court’s stay of the regulation in February 2016 and beyond.
Morrisey and the other AGs say any new rule must preserve the states’ role to manage power resources within their borders and their discretion to depart from guidelines where appropriate.
The coalition’s letter also argues EPA does not have authority to fundamentally restructure the federal-state framework of energy regulation. It further contends EPA must set any emissions reduction requirements on a source-by-source basis.
West Virginia joined attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming, as well as the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.
