The Bush administration chalked up another in a growing list of environmentally ignorant midnight rulings by “clarifying” a rule that could allow the approval of several new coal-fired power plants.

Instead of decommissioning America’s fleet of coal-fired power plants and making concerted efforts to prevent the construction of any new ones, the United States Government is finding ways to make sure plenty more can be built. In a memo issued by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Thursday, the Bush administration has “clarified” a rule prohibiting any federal agency from denying an operating permit to new or significantly remodeled power plants based on their carbon dioxide emissions.

[social_buttons]Thursday’s ruling stems back to a 2007 case in Utah when the Sierra Club sued EPA because they granted an operating permit to a new coal-fired power plant without taking the new plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into account.

In November of this year, the appeals board with legal jurisdiction in the case said the EPA’s rule was unclear. Thursday’s memo from Johnson was an effort to make the administration’s position clear; they have no intention of treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, despite being told by the Supreme Court they needed to do just that.

But it’s not just the highest court in the land the EPA is blowing off. In the memo, Johnson didn’t seem phased by the rising tide of public opinion regarding climate change either. He wrote, “The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls.”

Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, told The New York Times that as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.

Some of the power plants which may be allowed to move ahead blissfully ignorant of the position taken by the Supreme Court include a proposed $1.25 billion plant, called Pee Dee, that a South Carolina utility, is seeking to build; a project in Rogers City, Mich., that the Wolverine Power Cooperative Electric is seeking to build; and another project in Utah, a small plant sought by Consolidated Energy in Davis County.

But the big question is whether any of these plants will be able to squeeze through the rest of the permitting process before president-elect Barack Obama’s administration moves in and takes a much tougher position on carbon dioxide. Obama has said he would direct his administration to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.

Image: Mikko Itälahti via flickr under a Creative Commons License