10/09/2017-Trump EPA will start rolling back Clean Power Plan on Tuesday, Scott Pruitt says
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says he will sign a rule on Tuesday to begin the process of unraveling the Clean Power Plan.
The Obama administration created the rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The EPA plans to repeal the rule and take comments on how it should meet its obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, news agencies reported last week.
Tom DiChristopher | @tdichristopher
Published 1 Hour Ago Updated 22 Mins Ago
CNBC.com
Coal smoke and steam vapor pour out of a power plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.
Getty Images
Coal smoke and steam vapor pour out of a power plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.
The Trump administration on Tuesday will begin the process of dismantling President Barack Obama's signature policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
"Tomorrow in Washington D.C., I'll be signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule," Pruitt said in a speech Monday in Hazard, Kentucky.
Several news agencies reported last week that the EPA would soon propose repealing the rule and seek comments from stakeholders about a replacement regulation. The plan signals that the EPA has opted against tinkering with the existing rule — which was never seen as a likely course of action — or scrapping it altogether, a decision that would have almost certainly drawn lawsuits.
It also marks the next chapter for a policy that has become a lightning rod in the debate over the government's role in slowing climate change. The rule has been in limbo since the Supreme Court put it on hold in February 2016, after 27 states and other opponents filed suit.
The rule itself required states to devise plans to reduce planet-warming emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. President Donald Trump ordered the EPA to rewrite the rule in March.
Pruitt has long argued that the Obama administration acted beyond the scope of the law that empowers the agency to regulate emissions. He claims the Clean Power Plan would force states to invest in natural gas-fired and renewable power plants and shutter facilities that generate power from coal and nuclear material.
"When you think about what that rule meant, that rule really was about picking winners and losers," Pruitt said Monday. "Regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers."
Pruitt, who took part in the lawsuit as Oklahoma's attorney general, insists the rule should be limited to solutions that can be applied within the "fence line" of power plants. In other words, he argues the EPA only has the authority to require power producers to reduce emissions by making adjustments on-site at power plants. That could include fitting smokestacks with equipment that captures emissions.
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The Trump administration will put forward this argument to allege the Clean Power Plan violates the law, Bloomberg News reported.
"The Clean Power Plan departed from this practice by instead setting carbon dioxide emission guidelines for existing power plants that can only realistically be effected [sic] by measures that cannot be employed to, for, or at a particular source," Bloomberg quoted from the unreleased documents.
Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post also reported aspects of the plans, citing unreleased documents. The EPA declined CNBC's request to comment on the reports.
The documents do not explicitly indicate that the EPA will replace the Clean Power Plan.
The EPA is required to regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases following a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA found in 2009 that the gases pose a threat to public health.
Trump, Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry deny the consensus among climate scientists that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are the primary cause of global warming.
