AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation today released a paper by Senior Fellow Mario Loyola on options states have to address the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) onerous and punitive Clean Power Plan (CPP). The paper, The EPA’s Clean Power Plan: State Legislative Options, explores the different approaches the Texas Legislature can take to protect Texans from this unconstitutional expansion of federal power and ruinously expensive changes.

“The government of Texas faces a major challenge,” said Loyola.  “No combination of Texas state agencies has the authority to implement the measures that the EPA would require in order to approve a state plan. A major legislative overhaul would be needed in order to reorganize the state’s power sector and impose the necessary conservation measures on consumers of electricity. Hence, it seems almost cer­tain that in the absence of such legislation, the state will not be able to file a plan that the EPA can approve.

“Any resulting federal plan would merely force retirement of the electrical capacity that could be retired by a fully compliant state plan. So even then, the state would be coerced into enacting wide-ranging legislation over mat­ters entirely outside the purview of the Clean Air Act. The main difference with a federal plan is that the state would not be voluntarily delegating authority over its economic regulation to the EPA as required under a state plan.

“Texas should refuse to serve as the EPA’s deputy in the expansion of the EPA’s power outside its statutory authorities. Submitting a state plan that the EPA can ap­prove certainly seems out of the question. The EPA must be restrained within its statutory authority under the Clean Air Act.”
 
To read the full report, visit: http://txpo.li/CPP-state-options

Mario Loyola is a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He is the author of a major study of the Clean Power Plan, "EPA's Unprecedented Power Grab" in the spring 2015 issue of National Affairs.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

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