"Powerful economic currents are already pushing electric utilities toward clean energy even if the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a ruling that limits the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases, National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said Thursday.

Those trends could counterbalance a possible finding from the high court that the Environmental Protection Agency overreached in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court on Feb. 28 will start hearing arguments in West Virginia v. EPA, which seeks to limit how the EPA can regulate emissions from stationary sources under the clear air law. Republican members of Congress, GOP-led states, and conservative legal groups insist that executive authority on emissions regulation is limited.

But every one of the leaders of 10 of the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities who met with President Joe Biden on Wednesday “understood that clean energy is the future,” McCarthy said at a webinar convened by Politico."

Stephen Lee reports for Bloomberg Environment February 10, 2022. [2]