WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday placed limits on the sole Obama administration program
already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority in some cases to force
companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a
permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is
the chief gas linked to global warming.
The decision does not affect EPA proposals for first-time national standards for new and existing power
plants. The most recent proposal aims at a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but
won’t take effect for at least another two years.
The outcome also preserves EPA’s authority over facilities that already emit pollutants that the agency
regulates other than greenhouse gases. EPA called the decision “a win for our efforts to reduce carbon
pollution because it allows EPA, states and other permitting authorities to continue to require carbon
pollution limits in permits for the largest pollution sources.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said “EPA is getting almost everything it wanted in this
case.” Scalia said the agency wanted to regulate 86 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted from plants
nationwide. The agency will be able to regulate 83 percent of the emissions under the ruling, Scalia
said. The court voted 7-2 in this portion of the decision, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence
Thomas saying they would bar all regulation of greenhouse gases under the permitting program.
EPA said that, as of late March, 166 permits have been issued by state and federal regulators since 2011.

Permits have been issued to power plants, but also to plants that produce chemicals, cement, iron and
steel, fertilizer, ceramics and ethanol. Oil refineries and municipal landfills also have obtained
greenhouse gas permits since 2011, EPA said.
Under Monday’s ruling, EPA can continue to require permits for greenhouse gas emissions for those
facilities that already have to obtain permits because they emit other pollutants that EPA has long
regulated.
But Scalia, writing for the court’s conservatives in the part of the ruling in which the justices split
5-4, said EPA could not require a permit solely on the basis of greenhouse gas emissions.
The program at issue is the first piece of EPA’s attempt to reduce carbon output from large sources of
pollution.
The utility industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 13 states led by Texas asked the court to rule
that the EPA overstepped its authority by trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the
permitting program. The administration failed to get climate change legislation through Congress.
In 2012, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded
that the EPA was “unambiguously correct” in using existing federal law to address global warming.
The agency’s authority came from the high court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which said the
Clean Air Act gives EPA power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles.
Two years later, with Obama in office, the EPA concluded that the release of carbon dioxide and other
heat-trapping gases endangered human health and welfare. The administration used that finding to extend
its regulatory reach beyond automobiles and to develop national standards for large stationary sources.
Of those, electric plants are the largest source of emissions.
When the Supreme Court considered the appeals in October, the justices declined requests to consider
overruling the court’s 2007 decision, review the EPA’s conclusion about the health effects of greenhouse
gas emissions or question limits on vehicle emissions.