Back to the Drawing Board: US Supreme Court Upends Biden Climate Agenda

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to limit the powers of the nation’s top environmental regulator to curb carbon emissions will force the Biden administration to take more creative measures to reach its ambitious goals to combat climate change.

The conservative court’s 6-3 ruling restricted the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act anti-pollution law.

That is bad news for U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who came into office with the aim of slashing power sector emissions to net-zero by 2035, using the EPA as his key tool in doing so. The EPA has been working on a proposal to advance the decarbonization goal.

Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former EPA enforcement chief, said the Supreme Court decision will force “EPA back to drawing board.”