Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

25 

Opinion of the Court 

tory  factors  of  “cost,”  “nonair  quality  health  and  environ-
mental  impact,”  and  “energy  requirements.”  42  U. S. C. 
§7411(a)(1).  EPA  therefore  must  limit  the  magnitude  of
generation shift it demands to a level that will not be “exor-
bitantly  costly”  or  “threaten  the  reliability  of  the  grid.”
Brief for Federal Respondents 42.

But this argument does not so much limit the breadth of 
the Government’s claimed authority as reveal it.  On EPA’s 
view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it 
alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of na-
tional policy implicated in deciding how Americans will get 
their  energy.  EPA  decides,  for  instance,  how  much  of  a 
switch  from  coal  to  natural  gas  is  practically  feasible  by
2020,  2025,  and  2030  before  the  grid  collapses,  and  how 
high  energy  prices  can  go  as  a  result  before  they  become 
unreasonably “exorbitant.” 

There is little reason to think Congress assigned such de-
cisions to the Agency.  For one thing, as EPA itself admitted
when  requesting  special  funding,  “Understand[ing]  and
project[ing]  system-wide  . . .  trends  in  areas  such  as  elec-
tricity  transmission,  distribution,  and  storage”  requires 
“technical and policy expertise not traditionally needed in 
EPA regulatory development.”  EPA, Fiscal Year 2016: Jus-
tification of Appropriation Estimates for the Committee on
Appropriations  213  (2015)  (emphasis  added).    “When  [an]
agency  has  no  comparative  expertise”  in  making  certain 
policy  judgments,  we  have  said,  “Congress  presumably 
would not” task it with doing so.  Kisor v. Wilkie, 588 U. S. 
___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 17); see also Gonzales, 546 U. S., 
at 266–267. 

We  also  find  it  “highly  unlikely  that  Congress  would
leave” to “agency discretion” the decision of how much coal- 
based generation there should be over the coming decades. 
MCI, 512 U. S., at 231; see also Brown & Williamson, 529 
U. S.,  at  160  (“We  are  confident  that  Congress  could  not 
have intended to delegate a decision of such economic and