Democrats Designed the Climate Law to Be a Game Changer. Here’s How.

The Supreme Court restricted the EPA's ability to fight climate change this year because Congress had never given the agency the authority to shift America away from fossil fuels.

It has now.

One of the most consequential rulings of the term was the Supreme Court's justification for reining in the E.P.A. The Clean Air Act was amended to define carbon dioxide as an air pollutant.

The E.P.A. has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources according to legal experts.

The language in the Clean Air Act makes it clear that greenhouse gases are pollutants, according to Senator Tom Carper. Congress has told federal agencies to tackle carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.

Republicans tried to remove language from the legislation in the hours before it passed the Senate. The climate-and-tax bill was approved in the Senate by a vote of 51 to 50, with the Vice President casting the tiebreaking vote.

The language was objected to by Republicans because it appeared in a budget bill, which deals with government spending and revenue.

Ahead of the Senate vote, Senator Ted Cruz said that it was buried in there. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the E.P.A. in the West Virginia case. Mr. Cruz didn't reply to questions about his opposition.

Conservative organizations have challenged the authority of the EPA in the past. The executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation said that sneaking in the new law is likely to set up future regulatory fights.

Legal experts said those fights would be more difficult to win.

Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on the Clean Air Act, said the language cements E.P.A.'s authority and would be "a powerful disincentive" to new lawsuits.

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$370 billion will be spent over the next 10 years to expand the use of electric vehicles, jump-start renewable energy such as solar and wind power, and develop newer energy sources. The investment is expected to help cut emissions by 40 percent by the end of the decade.

White House officials have said they intend to pursue new regulations through the EPA to close the gap, even though Mr. Biden wants to cut emissions roughly in half.

Billions of dollars are given to the E.P.A. to reduce emissions from power plants and to fund the development of wind, solar and power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide. California has a plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035.

Republican attorneys general and conservative allies in states that rely heavily on fossil fuels are pursuing legal efforts to limit the federal government's power to cut emissions in order to challenge the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment.

He described it as a continuation of what he called the war on coal.

The primary law defining the responsibilities of the E.P.A. for protecting and regulating air quality was enacted in 1970. Acid rain and urban smog were curbed by the expansion in 1990.

The act doesn't explicitly state that the EPA should regulate carbon dioxide. The agency is asked to regulate pollutants that endanger human health. The Supreme Court ordered the agency to determine if carbon dioxide met that description. The E.P.A. found that it did in 2009.

Carbon dioxide could be defined as a pollutant. Several Supreme Court cases upheld that authority after the Obama and Biden administrations used that finding to justify their regulations.

Congress never directly addressed the issue. Conservative Supreme Court justices made clear that if lawmakers really wanted the government to move away from fossil fuels, they should say so.

The Environmental Defense Fund's general counsel said that the ruling assumed that Congress hadn't made it clear that the EPA had a responsibility to address climate pollution from the power sector. She said it was clear.

The effects of the provisions were downplayed. There was no chance that legal efforts to eliminate the government's ability to regulate climate pollution would have succeeded, according to an energy lawyer who served in the E.P.A.

The law does not seem to affect the Supreme Court ruling. He said that the clean energy incentives in the bill would make it easier for companies to transition away from fossil fuels.

Three Senate aides who were involved in the discussions said that Republicans fought the language behind closed doors.

The House passed a climate and tax package in November. The Inflation Reduction Act was announced in July by two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

The Republicans tried to convince the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, that there should be no reference to greenhouse gases in the budget bill.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson room, just off the Senate floor, was where top Republican and Democratic aides faced off for more than three hours. Ms. MacDonough allowed the changes to go through.

Later, on the Senate Floor, Senator Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, cut from the package that she argued would have expanded E.P.A.'s authority and did not meet the complex rules for passing a budget bill. The amendments to the Clean Air Act remained unchanged, according to Democrats and legal experts.