EPA Chief To End Obama-Era Clean Power Plan

HAZARD, KY — EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will wind down President Obama's signature environmental initiative, the Clean Power Plan, the Trump administration official said Monday. "The EPA and no federal agency should ever use its authority to say to you we are going to declare war on any sector of our economy," Pruitt said at an event Monday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The plan was designed to lower national levels of carbon emissions and push the country as a whole to depend on cleaner sources of energy. It focuses on coal power plants, one of the most carbon-intensive fuel sources used in America.

The EPA is expected to declare the Obama-era rule exceeded federal law by setting emissions standards that power plants could not reasonably meet. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

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“The war on coal is over,” Pruitt said in his speech in McConnell's home state of Kentucky, The New York Times reports. “Tomorrow in Washington D.C., I will be signing a proposed rule to roll back the Clean Power Plan. No better place to make that announcement than Hazard, Kentucky."

Hazard is a quintessential coal mining town whose economic health depends on what comes out of the coal mines.

Defenders of the Obama plan argue that the so-called "war on coal" is largely driven by market forces and development of alternatives that emit less carbon, such as natural gas.

"The Clean Power Plan follows trends that are already occurring in the electric sector and we are already dramatically reducing carbon pollution as we transition to clean, renewable energy," Joanne Spalding, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, an environmental organization, said when the program was previously blocked in the courts. "Large majorities of Americans support those efforts and the Clean Power Plan."

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said the EPA can repeal the Clean Power Plan, "but not the laws of economics."

"This won't revive coal or stop the U.S. from reaching our Paris goal," he said of the Paris Climate Accord, which a defiant Tump pulled out of in June.

In rolling back the Clean Power Plan, the Trump administration is following through on promises the president made during his presidential campaign. He has called climate change a "hoax," though he has since backed away from that claim. Trump also promised, "We are going to work very, very hard on clean air and clean water.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File