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Co-ops Ask Court to Block EPA Rule

Electric cooperatives are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan on hold until all legal challenges are resolved.

SCOTUS-240x175NRECA has joined in asking the Supreme Court to put the EPA’s Clean Power Plan on hold. (Photo By: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
NRECA has joined in asking the Supreme Court to put the EPA’s Clean Power Plan on hold. (Photo By: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

On Jan. 27, NRECA joined 38 co-ops, the American Public Power Association and other utility interests in a petition filed by Basin Electric Power Cooperative to seek an immediate stay of the Clean Power Plan.

The petition comes after a federal appeals court rejected a similar request less than a week earlier.

The Clean Power Plan sets limits for each state to reduce national carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

Without a stay of the EPA rule, co-ops, which serve 93 percent of the country’s persistent poverty counties, must make huge expenditures and shutter safe, affordable and reliable power plants to comply with regulations that later might be ruled illegal, NRECA said.

NRECA has estimated that total costs for electric cooperatives could reach as much as $28 billion during the Clean Power Plan’s compliance period, which starts in 2022.

Basin Electric said it must spend about $330 million within the next two years and $5 billion in total to comply. The rule will affect 13 electric generating units in four western states that the Bismarck, N.D., G&T owns or operates.

“The driving force behind challenging this rule is the well-being of end-use member-consumers. It’s those members who will be left paying for compliance with this rule,” Basin Electric said in a statement.

“These billions of dollars would simply cover adding new generation and potentially impact the operations of our existing facilities. This does not even include the expense of additional electric or gas infrastructure to support new generation.”

The petition to the Supreme Court noted that the EPA’s call for restructuring the “nation’s entire energy supply” by 2022 cannot be done “without enormous cost being incurred immediately.”

“Reorganizing the country’s energy supply is a gigantic undertaking, and it should not be compelled unless and until EPA’s authority to require these harms is upheld,” the petition said.

February 5, 2016

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