WASHINGTON — In a big win for environmentalists, the Supreme Court on Monday effectively endorsed the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from sources like power plants, even as it criticized what it called the administration’s overreaching.

The decision is one in a recent string of rulings upholding the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to issue Clean Air Act regulations to curb climate change, and the agency celebrated the decision.

But the combative tone of Monday’s ruling, along with its rejection of one of the agency’s principal rationales for the regulations under review, suggests that the road ahead may be rocky for other initiatives meant to reduce carbon emissions.

The decision, said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard, “gave the agency a tongue-lashing and suggested the potential for some significant limitations on how the agency chooses to exercise its authority in the future.”