INHOFE TELLS STATES TO IGNORE EPA’S LATEST EFFORT TO MOVE FORWARD ON CLEAN POWER PLAN

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, released a statement today telling states and tribes to ignore the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s latest announcement that it will take the next step in providing guidance for the Clean Energy Incentive Program (CEIP) should the Clean Power Plan (CPP) become effective. 

“EPA’s continued work on the Clean Energy Incentive Program is inconsistent with the stay and part of EPA’s last-ditch effort to save the president’s legacy carbon mandates. States should not waste their resources or worry with the EPA’s latest actions. The agency has no respect for the rule of law or decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States and would rather progress a political priority at the expense of American taxpayers. The highest court in the land has already ruled that EPA’s activities are on legally vulnerable ground and states heeding the court’s direction should not fear penalty.”

Allison Wood, Partner at Hunton & Williams, testified before the Senate EPW Committee on June 9, stating:  “The Clean Energy Incentive Program would not exist but for the Power Plan. If the Power Plan is found unlawful, the Clean Energy Incentive Program has no purpose. As a public policy matter, expending funds on the creation of a program to support a rule that the Supreme Court has found to have 'a fair prospect' of being overturned is a poor use of limited resources. And forcing States and regulated entities to expend their limited resources on the creation of tools that may end up being for nothing—or run the risk of having no input into those tools—when the Supreme Court has given them relief in the form of a stay at a minimum violates the spirit of the stay if not the stay itself.”

In follow up to the hearing, Inhofe sent a letter on June 9 to EPA’s Acting Assistant Adm. Janet McCabe seeking further clarification on the agency’s actions related to the Clean Power Plan after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the stay against the regulation in February.  The committee has not yet received a response at the time of this press release.

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