Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 79

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

23 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

nothing  insignificant  about  Section  111(d),  which  was  in-
tended to ensure that EPA would limit existing stationary 
sources’  emissions  of  otherwise  unregulated  pollutants
(however few or many there were).  See supra, at 6.  And 
the  front  half  of  the  argument  doesn’t  work  either.    The 
Clean Power Plan was not so big.  It was not so new.  And 
to the extent it was either, that should not matter. 

As to bigness—well, events have proved the opposite: The
Clean Power Plan, we now know, would have had little or 
no impact.  The Trump administration’s repeal of the Plan
created a kind of controlled experiment: The Plan’s “magni-
tude”  (ante,  at  24)  could  be  measured  by  seeing  how  far 
short  the  industry  fell  of  the  Plan’s  nationwide  emissions 
target.  Except  that  turned  out  to  be  the  wrong  question, 
because the industry didn’t fall short of the Plan’s goal; ra-
ther, the industry exceeded that target, all on its own.  See 
App. 265 (declaration of EPA official).  And it did so mainly 
through  the  generation-shifting  techniques  that  the  Plan
called for.  See ibid.; Brief for United States 47.  In effect, 
the Plan predicted market behavior, rather than altered it
(as  regulations  usually  do).    Cf.  Utility  Air,  573  U. S.,  at 
321–322  (discussing  the  “calamitous  consequences”  of  the 
EPA approach there under review).  And that fact has been 
understood for some years.  At the time of the repeal, the
Trump administration explained that “there [was] likely to 
be no difference between a world where the [Clean Power 
Plan  was]  implemented  and  one  where  it  [was]  not.”    84 
Fed. Reg. 32561.6  It is small wonder, then, that the power 
—————— 

6 Even when the Clean Power Plan was first issued, its projected im-
pact was far less than what the majority implies.  The majority states, 
for example, that the rule would have “reduce[d] GDP by at least a tril-
lion 2009 dollars by 2040.”  Ante, at 10.  That sounds like a lot, but it is 
in fact “equivalent to changes of a few tenths of 1 percent from baseline.”
Dept. of Energy, Analysis of the Impacts of the Clean Power Plan 63–64 
(2015).    And  the  “billions  of  dollars  in  compliance  costs”  the  majority
highlights were vastly outweighed by the Plan’s projected benefits.  Ante, 
at  10;  see  80  Fed.  Reg.  64679  (anticipating  $5–$8  billion  in  costs  and