Federal court strikes down major Trump climate rollback

A federal appeals court struck down one of the Trump administration’s most momentous climate rollbacks on Tuesday, saying the administration acted illegally in issuing a new rule that eased federal regulation of air pollution from power plants.

The Trump administration had cited a "fundamental misconstruction" of the Clean Air Act in carrying out the rollback, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled. The decision is likely to give the incoming Biden administration a freer hand to regulate emissions from power plants, one of the major sources of climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions.

Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Molly Block called the agency’s handling of the rule change "well-supported." The court decision "risks injecting more uncertainty at a time when the nation needs regulatory stability," she said.

Environmental groups celebrated the ruling by a three-member panel of the Court of Appeals.

"Today’s decision is the perfect Inauguration Day present for America,” said Ben Levitan, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that had challenged the Trump rule in court.

The ruling "confirms that the Trump administration’s dubious attempt to get rid of common-sense limits on climate pollution from power plants was illegal,” Levitan said. "Now we can turn to the critically important work of protecting Americans from climate change and creating new clean energy jobs."

A coalition of environmental groups, some state governments and others had challenged the Trump administration’s so-called Affordable Clean Energy rule, or ACE rule, for the power sector. The rule, which was made final in 2019, replaced the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature program to address climate change.

The court decision came on the last full day in office for the Trump administration. Under President Donald Trump, the EPA rolled back dozens of public health and environmental protections as the administration sought to cut regulation overall, calling much of it unnecessary and a burden to business.

Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on a pledge to bring back the U.S. coal industry, repealed the Obama administration’s plan to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants that power the nation’s electric grid. The Clean Power Plan was one of President Barack Obama’s legacy efforts to slow climate change.

The Trump administration substituted the Affordable Clean Energy plan, which left most of the decision-making on regulating power plant emissions to states. Opponents said the rule imposed no meaningful limits on carbon pollution and would have increased pollution at nearly 20% of the nation’s coal-fired power plants.

Market forces have continued the U.S. coal industry’s yearslong decline, however, despite those and other moves by Trump on the industry’s behalf.