A coalition of public and private electric utility companies, including Con Edison, Exelon and PG&E, has filed a petition in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge the EPA’s new Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE) and its repeal of the much tougher standards of the Clean Power Plan.
Companies in the coalition say the EPA’s rollback of the Clean Power Plan is the wrong approach to combating climate change and will undermine their own efforts to achieve meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
In a statement that accompanied the Sept. 6 filing, the Power Companies Climate Coalition cites higher costs to both customers and industry and argued the new rule prohibits the power sector from using the more effective emission reduction measures, such as emissions trading, that it has historically used.
The companies in the coalition have already invested heavily in technologies to help with these emission reduction measures because state governments have passed laws requiring them to adopt renewable energy, according to Reuters.
Coalition members serve more than 23 million customers across 49 states and the District of Columbia, and own or operate more than 84,000 megawatts of generating capacity. Members include:
In August, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) joined major public interest groups urging the overturn of the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy Rule.
“With climate change impacts rising, and clean energy costs falling, EPA should be strengthening the Clean Power Plan, not scrapping it for a do-nothing dirty power scheme,” said David Doniger, senior strategic director in NRDC’s Climate & Clean Energy program, at the time. “We’re going to court today to stop Trump from destroying the clean air laws we have to protect Americans’ health and safety from the nation’s biggest climate polluters.”
