In a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit largely affirmed EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
(CSAPR) on July 28. EME Homer City Generation, L.P.
v. EPA (D.C. Cir. July 28, 2015). CSAPR is the emissions
trading program to address interstate pollution from power
plants. The case was on remand to the D.C. Circuit from the
Supreme Court, which largely upheld the rule in 2014. The
D.C. Circuit still had to rule on several objections to CSAPR from
industry and some states.
In an opinion by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the court upheld several
principles underlying CSAPR, such as EPA's right to invalidate
formerly approved state implementation plans to allow imposition of
federal implementation plans to implement CSAPR. The court
did remand the rule to EPA to reconsider maximum emissions
allowances ("budgets") of several states, but did not
vacate the budgets, so as to avoid disruption of emissions trading
markets. The 2014 SO2 budgets for
