The state of Georgia is suing the Obama administration to block a new power plant regulation that makes it much harder to build a new coal-fired plant.
Georgia is one of 23 states that joined in a filing Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals asking the court to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards. The states are mostly Republican-run, with a few coal-state Democratic governors on board as well.
It comes on the heels of Georgia joining a similar lawsuit against the EPA's "Clean Power Plan," which mandates steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the states. Georgia has also sued to block an EPA clean water rule loathed by farmers and developers.
The new stricter standards for carbon emissions from power plants all but require that if a utility wants to build a new coal-fired plant, it use a new technology that captures carbon emissions for later storage underground. An under-construction but over-budget Southern Co. plant in Mississippi is one of the only such "carbon capture and storage" projects in the United States.
In a press release, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said the power plant regulations will cause electricity prices to increase:
“State Attorneys General are the last line of defense to the burdensome, and oftentimes unconstitutional, policies of the Obama Administration. We have banded together time and time again to protect our states and their families and workers from the unconstitutional overreach of the federal government.”
The regulations are part of President Barack Obama's push to counteract climate change via regulation under the Clean Air Act, a major legacy item for him as evidence grows of rising sea levels. For example, a tidal gauge off Fort Pulaski near Tybee Island has tracked the slow but steady rise — 11 inches over the past 80 years — of the Atlantic Ocean. The sea began rising dramatically in the 1990s.
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