Pennsylvania high court appears split over plan to force power plants to pay for carbon emissions

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Justices on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court indicated Wednesday that they are likely to have split opinions on whether a governor has the right to force power plant owners to pay for their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, or whether he first needs approval from a Legislature that refuses to go along with the plan.

Hanging in the balance is Pennsylvania's effort to become the first major fossil fuel-producing state to adopt carbon pricing.

On Wednesday, the state’s highest court listened to arguments on whether a lower court was right last summer to halt Pennsylvania's participation in a multistate consortium that imposes a price and declining cap on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

But the justices repeatedly turned the conversation to the underlying legal question still being considered by the lower court: whether former Gov. Tom Wolf usurped the Legislature’s constitutional authority to approve any form of taxation.

In that dispute, Republican lawmakers contend the carbon-trading plan is an unconstitutional tax because it lacks legislative approval; state lawyers contend it is a fee that a state agency has the authority to impose to operate a program.

Justice Christine Donohue, a Democrat, suggested it might be difficult to rule on one issue without settling the other.

“I don’t even know how we would make that holding without tipping our hand as to whether or not it's a tax or a fee and we just don’t play ‘hide the coin’ that way," Donohue told a lawyer for Senate Republicans.

At stake is no small amount of money: Pennsylvania would have raised more than $1 billion had it begun participating in 2022 when Wolf intended, according to calculations by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy...