Trying to reclaim the authority to regulate carbon emissions

This is potentially a big deal contained in the IRA:

When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels.

Now it has.

Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.”

That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

Needless to say, this is the beginning, rather than the end, of the struggle. Remember Brnovich — this Court will simply ignore clear statutory language if it considers the issue important enough. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

As with the critical changes to IDR in the student debt relief order, there’s some really strong policy work being done here.