Can the EPA Help Undo Virginia’s Climate Mandates?

This week, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin began the process of negating the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” that was, as President Barack Obama called it, the “holy grail of climate change regulation.”

The endangerment finding allowed the EPA to regulate the very byproduct of human existence, carbon dioxide, as a pollutant. With that finding, the EPA could regulate virtually anything that released this same gas that we emit with our breath.

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So, here in Virginia, we have the Virginia Clean Economy Act that was passed in 2020 by the Democrat-majority General Assembly and signed into law by Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam. If you have heard about “the California-ing of Virginia,” this is the act that did that.

It legally connected many of Virginia’s environmental regulations to California’s, including getting to “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2030. The law mandates transitioning away from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas and puts a stop to building new fossil fuel-based electricity-generating facilities despite the skyrocketing consumer and business demand for more electricity.

What does the EPA’s latest action mean for this law? Can the Virginia Clean Economy Act be repealed? Can it be overturned in court?

The Daily Signal sits down with Thomas Jefferson Institute analyst Steve Haner to find out.

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