Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

24 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

Opinion of the Court 

Hearing on EPA’s Proposed Carbon Pollution Standards for 
Existing Power Plants before the Senate Committee on En-
vironment and Public Works, 113th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 33 
(2014).

This view of EPA’s authority was not only unprecedented;
it  also  effected  a  “fundamental  revision  of  the  statute, 
changing it from [one sort of] scheme of . . . regulation” into
an entirely different kind.  MCI, 512 U. S., at 231.  Under 
the Agency’s prior view of Section 111, its role was limited
to ensuring the efficient pollution performance of each indi-
vidual regulated source.  Under that paradigm, if a source
was already operating at that level, there was nothing more 
for  EPA  to  do.    Under  its  newly  “discover[ed]”  authority, 
Utility  Air,  573  U. S.,  at  324,  however,  EPA  can  demand 
much greater reductions in emissions based on a very dif-
ferent kind of policy judgment: that it would be “best” if coal 
made up a much smaller share of national electricity gen-
eration.  And  on  this  view  of  EPA’s  authority,  it  could  go 
further, perhaps forcing coal plants to “shift” away virtually
all  of  their  generation—i.e.,  to  cease  making  power  alto-
gether.3 

The Government attempts to downplay the magnitude of 
this  “unprecedented  power  over  American  industry.”  In-
dustrial Union Dept., AFL–CIO v. American Petroleum In-
stitute, 448 U. S. 607,  645 (1980)  (plurality opinion).  The 
amount of generation shifting ordered, it argues, must be
“adequately demonstrated” and “best” in light of the statu-

—————— 

3 The dissent suggests that EPA could bring about the same result by, 
for example, simply requiring coal plants to become natural gas plants, 
and  that  this would fit within the prior regulatory approach of efficiency-
improving,  at-the-source  measures.    Post,  at  24.  Of  course,  EPA  has 
never ordered anything remotely like that, and we doubt it could.  Sec-
tion 111(d) empowers EPA to guide States in “establish[ing] standards
of performance” for “existing source[s],” §7411(d)(1), not to direct existing
sources to effectively cease to exist.