(ARLINGTON, Va.) — The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) today welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to halt implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan.
“Charging ahead with implementation of the Clean Power Plan would have caused immediate and irreparable harm to America’s electric co-ops,” said NRECA Interim CEO Jeffrey Connor. “Had the stay not been granted, co-ops would have been forced to take costly and irreversible steps to comply with the rule, which is a huge overreach of EPA’s legal authority. The Clean Power Plan is a direct threat to co-ops’ ability to provide affordable and reliable electricity to their member consumers and should be erased from the books.”
Last fall, 39 generation and transmission cooperatives joined NRECA 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.
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 private, not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.