About a month ago it seemed as if the Supreme Court delayed the Mercury Rule because the required benefit-cost analysis wasn't ex-ante enough. In effect, the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to go back in time and conduct the analysis again:
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison ... confirmed that the EPA next month plans to finalize a fix to the rule to retroactively apply its cost-benefit analysis in the way the Supreme Court said was necessary.
The court ruled last June that the EPA should have conducted a cost-benefit analysis on the regulation before it even decided to start writing it. The agency did so as part of the regulatory process, but the justices said that was not sufficient.
From this morning's overnight energy email:
The Obama administration is one step closer to putting out its fix for its major power plant pollution rule that the Supreme Court said was illegal.
The White House Office of Management and Budget approved the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) measure to fix the rule Thursday, a day before the deadline the EPA gave itself.
The problem with the mercury and air toxics rule, the Supreme Court said was that the EPA should have considered costs and benefits before it even started writing the rule, not just in the process of writing it.
So the EPA has proposed to simply apply its existing cost-benefit analysis -- which shows benefits outweighing costs by nearly 10 to 1 -- to the earlier part of the rulemaking process.
Keep an eye out for the fix Friday.
I eagerly await the "Friday fix."