Trump's EPA chief overriding Obama-era Clean Power Plan

Environmental groups denounce decision

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, talks to a reporter after speaking at Whayne Supply in Hazard, Ky, Monday, Oct. 9, 2017.  Pruitt says the Trump administration will abandon the Obama-era clean power plan aimed at reducing global warming. (AP Photo/Adam Beam)
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, talks to a reporter after speaking at Whayne Supply in Hazard, Ky, Monday, Oct. 9, 2017. Pruitt says the Trump administration will abandon the Obama-era clean power plan aimed at reducing global warming. (AP Photo/Adam Beam)

The war on coal is over.

HAZARD, Ky. - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday he will 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," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declared in the coal mining state of Kentucky. He said no federal agency "should ever use its authority" to "declare war on any sector of our economy."

For Pruitt, getting rid of the Clean Power Plan will mark the culmination of a long fight he began as the elected attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt was among about two-dozen attorneys general who sued to stop President Barack Obama's 2014 push to limit carbon emissions, stymieing the limits from ever taking effect.

Closely aligned with the oil and gas industry in his home state, Pruitt rejects the consensus of scientists that man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary driver of global climate change.

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.

In his order today, Pruitt is expected to declare that the Obama-era rule exceeded federal law by setting emissions standards that power plants could not reasonably meet.

But the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies power to seven southern states including coal-rich Kentucky, says it expects to achieve most of the targets of the Clean Power Plan regardless of the EPA action. TVA projects it will cut its carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, by shutting down more than half of the 59 coal-fired units it once operated and adding new natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy sources to its power portfolio.

TVA has already shut down its John Sevier, Widows Creek and Colbert fossil plants to cut its carbon emissions by more than 35 percent in the past 12 years, and soon will shutter more units at its Allen, Johnsonville and Paradise coal plants.

"The plans that TVA has implemented and has in place actually predate the Clean Power Plan," TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said Monday. "We diversified our portfolio because we determined it was in the best interest of the customers we serve by providing cleaner, more reliable power at the lowest cost over the long term."

photo FILE - In this June 2, 2017 file photo, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. Speaking in Kentucky on Monday, Pruitt said he will sign a proposed rule on Tuesday “to withdraw the so-called clean power plan of the past administration." (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

But Trump has nominated a retired coal executive, Kenny Allen of Hopkins County, Ky., to fill one of the five vacancies on the TVA board. Allen, who recently retired from the Armstrong Coal Co. in Kentucky, has been critical of the Clean Power Plan, claiming in 2014 that it would have "a devastating impact on America's economy" and "slam the door shut on an already reeling coal industry."

It was not immediately clear if Pruitt would seek to issue a new rule without congressional approval, which Republicans had criticized the Obama administration for doing. Pruitt's rule wouldn't become final for months, and is then highly likely to face legal challenges filed by left-leaning states and environmental groups.

Pruitt appeared at an event with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at Whayne Supply, a Hazard, Ky., company that sells coal mining supplies. The store's owners have been forced to lay off about 60 percent of its workers in recent years.

While cheering the demise of the Clean Power Plan as a way to stop the bleeding, McConnell conceded most of those lost jobs are never coming back.

"A lot of damage has been done," said McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. "This doesn't immediately bring everything back, but we think it stops further decline of coal-fired plants in the United States and that means there will still be some market here."

Obama's plan was designed to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rule dictated specific emission targets for states based on power-plant emissions and gave officials broad latitude to decide how to achieve reductions.

The Supreme Court put the plan on hold last year after legal challenges by industry and coal-friendly states. Even so, the plan helped drive a recent wave of retirements of coal-fired plants, which are also being squeezed by low-cost natural gas and renewable power. In the absence of stricter federal regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions, many states have issued their own mandates promoting energy conservation.

The withdrawal of the Clean Power Plan is the latest in a series of moves by Trump and Pruitt to dismantle Obama's legacy on fighting climate change, including the delay or rollback of rules limiting levels of toxic pollution in smokestack emissions and wastewater discharges from coal-burning power plants.

On Thursday, Trump nominated former coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to serve as Pruitt's top deputy at EPA - one of several recent political appointees at the agency with direct ties to the fossil fuel interests.

The president announced earlier this year that he will pull the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement. Nearly 200 countries have committed to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

"This president has tremendous courage," Pruitt said Monday. "He put America first and said to the rest of the world we are going to say no and exit the Paris Accord. That was the right thing to do."

Despite the rhetoric about saving coal, government statistics show that coal mines now employ only about 52,000 workers nationally - a modest 4-percent uptick since Trump became president. Those numbers are dwarfed by the jobs created by building such clean power infrastructure as wind turbines and solar arrays.

Environmental groups and public health advocates quickly derided Pruitt's decision as short-sighted.

"Trump is not just ignoring the deadly cost of pollution, he's ignoring the clean energy deployment that is rapidly creating jobs across the country," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.

Staff writer Dave Flessner contributed to this story.

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