The attorney general of Kentucky claims that the US EPA is overstepping its bounds by requiring major emissions reductions at fossil fuel power facilities across the nation.
Kentucky asked a federal judge to review the agency’s new rule, joining a group of twenty-four other attorneys general in doing so. Attorney General Russell Coleman stated in a release that the new technology would be too expensive.
“Kentucky families and job-creators will be cut off from affordable and reliable energy. We’re fighting this radical green agenda that would only leave Kentucky in the dark,” Coleman stated.
The coalition’s attorneys general are all Republicans, and many of them represent states that produce and burn coal in large quantities.
Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming were also involved in the challenge, which was spearheaded by West Virginia and Indiana.
Since taking over as attorney general this year, Coleman has filed numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration over its policies, with a large number of those cases centered on efforts to limit pollution and climate change.
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Coleman led a multistate challenge against a Biden administration policy that required states to develop a plan to cut tailpipe emissions, and in April, a federal district judge in Kentucky ruled against it.
According to the EPA, the new regulations for power plants will “significantly reduce” the greenhouse gas emissions produced by fossil fuel-fired power plants by promoting new technologies and more efficient energy generation.
According to climate experts, fossil fuels have a major role in the global warming that humanity is experiencing, and in order to prevent additional warming, humanity needs to stop using them.
Natural catastrophes have been exacerbated by climate change, which has made Kentucky warmer and wetter in recent decades.
Coal-fired power plants generate only 40% of the energy generated in the United States, but they account for more than three-quarters of the emissions released by the electricity industry.
Kentucky’s electricity generation in 2022 was derived from 68% coal-fired power stations, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Coleman referred to the technology that power plants would probably need to implement in order to satisfy the new requirements as “experimental and expensive.”
The rule discusses several methods, one of which being carbon capture and sequestration/storage, a technology that has had difficulty becoming economically viable.
But, with the introduction of new tax credits in 2022, that calculation might have been revised. Congress raised the current tax credits to $85 for each ton of carbon dioxide that polluters, such as power plants, capture and bury under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The EPA claimed in its new rule that electrical firms could actually afford to comply with it because of the substantial incentives for carbon capture and other greenhouse gas lowering technologies.
With 25% of all domestic emissions coming from the electricity industry in 2021, it was one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases in the United States.
The historic rule was initially proposed by the EPA in 2023, which was the agency’s first attempt to regulate the amount of greenhouse emissions that power plants are permitted to produce. The new rule was finally finalized by the government in April.
Republican attorneys general filed a court brief asking the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C. to deem the regulation unconstitutional and cease its implementation.
According to a news release, The East Kentucky Power Cooperative, one of Kentucky’s biggest power providers, expressed their belief that the new law may result in a 96% rise in residential electricity bills.
The cooperative has already invested $79,507 this year to effectively advocate for a state legislation that places additional limitations on Kentucky’s fossil fuel electric generating units’ ability to retire.
The Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives, Inc., a coalition including 26 other Kentucky cooperatives, expended $118,885 advocating for the identical legislation.
For-profit electric utility companies, such as Duke Energy and Louisville Gas & Electric, were opposing the bill at the same time, claiming that it would increase utility bills if they were forced to continue operating inefficient power plants.