Center for Biological Diversity


For Immediate Release, April 10, 2015

Contact: Kevin Bundy, (415) 572-2527, kbundy@biologicaldiversity.org

Federal Court Upholds EPA Authority to Require Carbon Pollution Limits at
Power Plants, Factories and Other Large Industrial Facilities

WASHINGTON— Kevin Bundy, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, issued the following statement regarding the order issued this afternoon by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in Coalition for Responsible Regulation, et al., v. EPA (Case No. 09-1322 et al.):

“This important decision confirms that factories, power plants and other big industrial sources of air pollution that hurts public health also have an obligation under the Clean Air Act to cut carbon pollution. Now the EPA should enforce this obligation in a way that meaningfully reduces the planet-warming pollutants responsible for the climate crisis.”

The appeals court’s decision follows the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, which largely upheld the EPA’s implementation of greenhouse gas permitting and pollution reduction requirements for large industrial facilities under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court decision overturned EPA permitting requirements based solely on a facility’s greenhouse gas emissions, but left intact requirements that facilities already emitting major amounts of other pollutants install the “best available control technology” to reduce climate pollution.

Today’s decision narrowly implements the Supreme Court’s ruling by vacating permitting requirements based solely on greenhouse gases, but leaving the rest of the EPA’s greenhouse gas reduction regulations intact.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 825,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


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