By Devin Henry, The Hill.

The Obama administration’s top environmental regulator predicted new, broad power plant regulations will hold up despite a series of lawsuits against them.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy said that regulators knew that implementing its Clean Power Plan, a rule designed to cut emissions from power plants, “was not going to be an effort without controversy.”

The Clean Power Plan, which looks to cut power sector emissions by 32 percent by 2030, is the cornerstone of Obama's climate change agenda. Since the EPA finalized the regulation, more than half the states and scores of interest groups and businesses have sued against it, arguing regulators overstepped their bounds in issuing the rule.