The Supreme Court ruling Thursday that curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s flexibility to curb power-plant emissions on a systematic basis is setting the stage for a piecemeal approach to the issue. But the decision didn’t erase the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse-gas pollutants more broadly, nor did it leave it entirely toothless in the fight against climate change. The agency still maintains the ability to regulate emissions from individual power plants, but now must move forward with more caution. Even before the ruling, EPA officials were planning new rules to regulate plant emissions, taking a narrower approach that would be focused squarely on coal- and gas-fired power plants, without bringing in non-emitting renewable electricity. Now it seems likely that the narrow approach will be the clearest path forward after the Supreme Court stripped the agency of broader oversight. The […]