Dive Brief:

• Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) has filed a lawsuit alleging the federal government's Clean Power Plan will force the state to fundamentally restructure its generation, transmission, and regulation of electricity, ultimately threatening power reliability and affordability.
• Specifically, the lawsuit alleges the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposal contradicts at least three separate statutory bars and two constitutional limitations on federal power.
• Last month a federal appeals court threw out a challenge from Murray Energy, saying the challenge was premature as the rule has not been finalized.

Dive Insight:

The final rule has not even been proposed, but interests from around the power industry are ready to litigate the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.

Oklahoma has filed a challenge to the proposed rule, less than a month after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled an energy company's lawsuit was premature. Murray Energy's suit was tossed, but that didn't stop Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt from challenging the plan as a threat to both reliability and affordability.

“The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan," Pruitt said in a statement. "The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats’ authority over states’ energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity."

Pruitt said the states' residents care about air and environment issues, but that the state is better informed and equipped to make decisions than the federal government. "We are filing this lawsuit in order to ensure decisions on power generation and how to achieve emissions reductions are made at the local level rather than at the federal level,” Pruitt said.