Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation v. EPA

The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari to the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation, which sought review of the D.C. Circuit’s order governing further proceedings after the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. In its April 2015 order, the D.C. Circuit did not vacate EPA’s regulations concerning greenhouse gas permitting for stationary sources in their entirety. Instead, the D.C. Circuit ordered EPA to rescind the portions of the regulations that required permits based solely on a source’s greenhouse gas emissions, but left in place regulations that required sources subject to Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) requirements due to other types of emissions (often referred to as “anyway” sources) to use best available control technology to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation (Group) filed a petition seeking Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit’s decision on remand from the Supreme Court’s decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. In April 2015, the D.C. Circuit issued an order governing further proceedings in which it accepted EPA’s view that UARG v. EPA did not require EPA to start from scratch to establish a greenhouse gas permitting regime for stationary sources. The D.C. Circuit said that EPA should rescind its regulations requiring Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) or Title V permits solely based on a source’s greenhouse gas emissions and that the agency should “consider whether any further revisions to its regulations are appropriate in light of UARG v. EPA.” In its petition for a writ of certiorari, the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group argued that EPA should be required to conduct new rulemaking if it wants to regulate greenhouse emissions from “anyway” sources (i.e., sources that meet PSD and Title V emissions thresholds for other air pollutants) and that the D.C. Circuit should have vacated the existing regulations.