WASHINGTON — Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange gave a forceful rebuke of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules limiting carbon emissions from power plants during testimony Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
“EPA’s proposed guidelines for existing power plant performance standards… are simply the most recent example of the Federal Government usurping authorities properly delegated to the States,” Strange told the Senate subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety.
The EPA will finalize its stricter standards in mid-2015. The agency will then give each state a year to design a plan to implement the new regulations. States will have the option to upgrade their existing coal-fired units and promote “renewable energy,” or abandon coal all together. If a state does not produce an implementation plan, the federal government can intervene and impose one on them.
“The defense of this proposal will be that the States have ‘flexibility,’” Strange said. “But providing the States with a narrow range of costly policy choices, which most of the States did not choose for themselves, does not provide any actual flexibility and still produces the same outcome — higher electricity prices and decreased generation.”
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Strange’s testimony focused heavily on his opinion that the EPA is overstepping its Constitutional bounds. He also warned of the negative impacts the new regulations will have on the economy and the reliability of the power grid if they are implemented.
“The State of Alabama vigorously opposes EPA’s proposed mandate to effectively restructure the electric sector, as it would have disastrous consequences for electric reliability and the economy,” he said. “Those consequences, moreover, would all stem from a patently unlawful application of the Clean Air Act. EPA’s proposal seeks to expand the scope of (its authority) in an unprecedented manner. It would do so at the expense of State authority that is expressly identified and preserved in the Clean Air Act and in the unquestionable jurisdiction of States over intrastate electricity markets. And it would do all of these things for no discernible benefit, given the increasing emissions of China and other developing economies. There is no rationale that can support such a regulation, and this Committee should ensure that it is halted.”
A video of Strange’s testimony can be viewed below.
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