The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he’ll sign a new rule overriding the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.
“The war on coal is over,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in the coal mining state of Kentucky. No federal agency “should ever use its authority” to “declare war on any sector of our economy.”
Pruitt, who hails from Oklahoma, was among some two-dozen attorney generals who sued to stop President Barack Obama’s 2014 push to limit carbon emissions, stymieing the limits from ever taking effect.
President Donald Trump, who appointed Pruitt and shares his skepticism of established climate science, promised to kill the Clean Power Plan during the 2016 campaign as part of his broader pledge to revive the nation’s struggling coal mines.
It’s expected Pruitt will declare the Obama-era rule exceeded federal law by setting emissions standards that power plants could not reasonably meet. Unclear is whether he will seek to issue a new rule without congressional approval, a move Republicans had criticized the Obama administration for doing.
