It's a costly mandate, resting on shaky legal and technical foundations. Americans would be fortunate to have it repealed.

President Biden issued his Clean Power Plan 2.0 after the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that President Obama's Clean Power Plan 1.0 exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) statutory authority. The Court's 2022 decision concluded that the EPA had overstepped by attempting to reshape the nation's energy grid without clear congressional approval.

In a world where energy security and affordability are paramount, one might assume that when the Supreme Court strikes down a sweeping environmental regulation, the EPA would reconsider its approach. But in Washington, ideology often trumps reason, and undeterred, the Biden administration returned in 2024 with a sequel that EPA now proposes to end.

The Clean Power Plan 1.0 attempted to force states to overhaul their energy systems entirely, compelling them to adopt renewable energy and shutter fossil fuel plants, regardless of local needs or economic consequences.

Its successor, the Clean Power Plan 2.0, imposed an estimated $15 billion in regulatory costs over 20 years, and greater costs through increases in prices of electricity and slower economic growth. EPA argues "that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution."

Just as Chief Justice John Roberts warned in 2022 that the EPA had claimed "an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority," the EPA was trying to do through regulation with the Clean Power Plan 2.0 what Congress had repeatedly declined to do through legislation.

Fifteen years ago similar legislative proposals—the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman bills—failed in the U.S. Congress even when Democrats held strong majorities. That should have signaled to regulators that such sweeping changes lacked democratic legitimacy.