Buckeye Power and North Central Electric Cooperative welcomed last night’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to halt implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan.

“We are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized what has been obvious to electric cooperatives — that the U.S. EPA has greatly exceeded its authority in its rules to reduce carbon dioxide and that the EPA’s plan, if allowed to go forward, would harm electric co-op consumers,” said Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Buckeye Power, the wholesale power provider for Ohio’s member-owned, not-for-profit electric distribution cooperatives. “Our power generation across the United States is cleaner than it has ever been and will continue to get cleaner without the EPA’s regulations. We look forward to a more permanent solution to the EPA’s regulatory overreach as the legal process moves forward.”

Had the stay not been granted, electric cooperatives would have been forced to take costly and irreversible steps to comply with the rule, which cooperatives contend is outside the scope of the EPA’s regulatory authority and would achieve little to no environmental benefit while increasing the cost of electricity.

“We’re hopeful that the Supreme Court will finally limit the extent a president can use his regulatory ‘pen and phone’ without Congressional legislation,” said Markus Bryant, General Manager of North Central Electric Cooperative. “The Supreme Court must insist the President respect Congress's sole law-making responsibility under our Constitution. Just because Congress may be deadlocked on an issue is no excuse for the President to assume he can take over the role of Congress to make laws.”

Last fall, Buckeye Power joined the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and 36 other generation and transmission cooperatives in petitioning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review and ultimately reject the Clean Power Plan. A decision in this case may come later this year or early 2017.