HAZARD, Ky. -- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that he will sign a new rule overriding the Clean Power Plan, an effort that former President Barack Obama initiated 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 attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt was among about two dozen attorneys general who sued to stop Obama's 2014 push to limit carbon emissions, stymieing the restrictions from ever taking effect.
Pruitt, whose home state has large oil and gas industries, rejects the consensus of scientists that man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary driver of global climate change.
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President Donald Trump, who appointed Pruitt and who also has expressed skepticism about climate science, promised during the 2016 campaign to kill the Clean Power Plan as part of his broader pledge to revive the nation's struggling coal industry.
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.
Coal- and natural gas-fired power plants are responsible for about one-third of the United States' carbon dioxide emissions. When the final draft of the Clean Power Plan was unveiled in 2015, it was designed to cut power sector emissions 32 percent by 2030, relative to 2005 figures. While many states are already shifting away from coal power for economic reasons, experts say that scrapping the rule could slow that transition.
It was not immediately clear whether 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 it is likely to face legal challenges from states and environmental groups.
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Pruitt appeared Monday 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 the workers in recent years.
While cheering the demise of the Clean Power Plan as a way to stop the bleeding, McConnell conceded that most of those lost jobs are never returning.
"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 dictated specific emissions targets for states based on power-plant emissions, and it gave officials broad latitude to decide how to achieve reductions.
A new analysis by the research firm Rhodium Group estimated that even if the regulation is repealed, U.S. emissions from power plants are currently on track to fall 27 percent to 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, roughly in the range of what the Clean Power Plan originally envisioned.
But John Larsen, author of the Rhodium Group analysis, estimated that if Obama's policies had remained in place, as many as 21 states would have had to make deeper reductions than they are currently expected to do without the rule -- including Texas, West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- and that emissions most likely would have fallen further than the 32 percent originally envisioned.
"So for certain states," Larsen wrote, "[Monday's] announcement is a big deal."
ARKANSAS EMISSIONS
Under the Clean Power Plan, Arkansas is required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 36 percent from 2012 figures.
During the planning process for complying with the rule, experts noted that Arkansas emissions have fallen dramatically since 2012 because lower natural gas prices prompted less coal-fired power generation. Some projected that if energy trends continued, Arkansas would be close to or capable of meeting its goals in 2025 and 2030 without acting.
Arkansas government leaders have opposed the Clean Power Plan, joining a lawsuit over it.
On Monday, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge issued a statement supporting Pruitt's decision, citing questions of Clean Power Plan's legality and its potential costs for utilities and their customers.
"By ending this plan, the EPA will hopefully return to the drawing board, seeking input from the states in order to craft a common sense, lawful rule that protects the environment and the American people," Rutledge said.
Other Arkansas groups expressed disappointment with Pruitt's decision, citing climate change concerns and the EPA's earlier estimates on the improvements to public health that the plan would provide by way of reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants.
"Repealing the Clean Power Plan means, in no uncertain terms, that Scott Pruitt cares more about propping up the dirty fossil fuel industry than he cares about the health of Arkansans," said Glen Hooks, director of the Sierra Club's Arkansas chapter, in a news release.
Utilities in Arkansas have invested more recently in natural gas and renewable energies and have projected continuing those investments.
"We have taken steps to remain under our voluntary carbon cap, by investing in a diversified portfolio of utility-scale solar investments, low-emitting modern natural gas units, and zero-emissions nuclear assets, and we will continue to do so as a long-term commitment of our company," Entergy said in a statement.
The long-term strategy of Southwestern Electric Company and parent company American Electric Power is the same, American Electric spokesman Melissa McHenry said.
"We've made significant reductions in our CO2 strategy, and that strategy doesn't change with the ... [repeal] of the Clean Power Plan," she said.
CLIMATE CHANGE FIGHT
The Supreme Court put the Obama 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 the lower cost of 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 regulations 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 the EPA -- one of several recent political appointees at the agency with direct ties to fossil fuel interests.
The president also announced earlier this year that he will pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Nearly 200 countries have committed to 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 currently employ only about 52,000 workers nationally -- a 4 percent uptick since Trump became president. Those numbers are dwarfed by the jobs created by building clean power infrastructure such as wind turbines and solar arrays.
Pruitt's proposal for repeal will now have to go through a formal public-comment period before being finalized, a process that could take months. Pruitt will also ask the public for comment on what a replacement rule should look like, but the EPA has not offered a timeline.
Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who shepherded the rule during Obama's second term, said in a statement Monday that a proposal to repeal it "without any timeline or even a commitment to propose a rule to reduce carbon pollution, isn't a step forward, it's a wholesale retreat from EPA's legal, scientific and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change."
"The Supreme Court has concluded multiple times that EPA is obligated by law to move forward with action to regulate greenhouse gases, but this administration has no intention of following the law," McCarthy said.
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Beam and Michael Biesecker of The Associated Press, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer of The New York Times, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis of The Washington Post, and Emily Walkenhorst of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 10/10/2017