From ScotusBlog: Carbon pollution controls put on hold

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Dividing five to four, the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening ordered the Obama administration not to take any steps to carry out its “Clean Power Plan,” a move that may stall the plan until after the president leaves office next January. The order — issued in identical form in individual responses to five separate challenges — will spare the operators of coal-fired power plants from having to do anything to begin planning for a shift to energy sources that the government considers to be cleaner. (An example of the five orders is this one, issued in a case filed by twenty-nine states.)

The plan, designed to make sharp reductions in carbon pollution from the smokestacks of generating plants fueled by fossil sources, is now under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It has put the case on an expedited schedule, with a hearing set for June 2. However, it may not finish its ruling until this fall, and then either side may try to move the case on to the Supreme Court.

The new orders will delay all parts of the plan, including all deadlines that would stretch on into 2030, until after the D.C. Circuit completes its review and the Supreme Court has finished, if the case does wind up there. There appears to be little chance for those two stages of review to be over by the time President Obama’s term ends next January 20.

Justice Department lawyers had tried to persuade the Supreme Court not to impose any delay, noting that no state would have to file a plan to implement the policy until this September, and any plant would find it easy to get an extension of time to file such a plan until 2018. The government lawyers also told the Court that actual implementation of the plan would not have to begin until 2022, and would have a final completion deadline of 2030.