Congress has failed to pass climate change legislation in the past.
The 1970 Clean Air Act was used by the Obama White House to craft regulations that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The Biden White House can't take certain actions under the law that the Supreme Court ruled against.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformation of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute." He said that the discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program.
The decision prevents the agency from setting carbon-emission limits as a way to force the entire power generation industry to move away from burning coal to other, less-polluting energy sources.
Carol Browner was the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. She said being able to look across the entire grid and see the best and cheapest sources of electricity was a powerful tool to combat climate change.
The decision is a victory for coal-fired power plants.
The Supreme Court's decision in the case of West Virginia v. EPA was applauded by the governor. Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. will not be allowed to decarbonize our economy because of this ruling.
Changing how the U.S. makes electricity is still a major goal of the Biden Administration even though the path to achieve it has narrowed.
Electric appliances and vehicles will need low-carbon electricity in order to fulfill their promise if power generation is made more climate friendly.
It's important that the timing is right. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, electricity generation needs to slash its emissions by 80% by the same time frame as the Biden Administration pledges to reduce carbon emissions by 50%.
The courts have limited how the EPA treats carbon dioxide from power plants, but legal experts said they didn't stop short of closing off other means of lower emissions.
"The court restrained itself from saying, 'You can't do this and you can't do that,'" said Jody Freeman, founding director of the Harvard Law School Environmental Law and Policy Program. Co-firing coal with low-polluting fuels is one option still on the table. The majority opinion didn't rule out a cap-and-trade system, but it did not rule it out completely.
Regulators were going to work on the decision. The administrator of the EPA said earlier this year that other limits on pollutants could steer power generation away from coal. He said that he doesn't believe we have to rely on any one regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
When crafting policies that are resistant to court challenges, having clearly defined limits to executive power can be useful.
"I think it will be helpful to EPA because it will likely establish the parameters under which they can regulate power plants," said Jeff Holmstead, a former administrator for the EPA. Guessing where those parameters are and fighting over them in court is not the best way to go about it.
The doctrine of the "major questions" was named by the Justices in their decisions. Agencies have latitude to define the terms of the statutes that allow their actions.
The instrument could chill a lot of regulation by the EPA and other agencies.
There are arguments against regulating emissions from vehicle tailpipes and the social cost of carbon in other key climate cases.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this fall on the question of what is considered water in the US. The Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA use that term when they decide what is covered by the Clean Water Act. The definitions are also being worked on.
The Justices ruling on the Idaho case could affect the way the government regulates pollution in bodies of water across the country.
Tom Johnson said that the WV decision could act as "tea leaves" for how the Supreme court is thinking about the case.
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