President Trump will sign an executive order Tuesday to roll back the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan, and cancel what Trump says are unnecessary rules on coal, oil and natural gas production that are harming economic growth.
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The executive order is seen as central in meeting the president’s campaign promises to help coal country rebound from the tens of thousands of job losses that the industry blames, in part, on restrictive environmental regulations.
A senior administration official told reporters on a call Monday that the order has the “twin goals” of both moving forward while also looking backward.
It “looks forward” by setting the stage for the “beginning strategy” in devising an energy policy framework for the nation, said the senior official. And it looks backward by eliminating regulations from the previous administration that hinder growth and energy production.
It will call on all agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of all rules to determine those that inhibit energy production, and report back to the White House in 180 days.
After that, the White House will sit down with the agencies to develop an energy “blueprint,” the official told reporters.
The order will also direct the Environmental Protection Agency to review and, if necessary, redo climate regulations for existing fossil fuel power plants, called the Clean Power Plan, with the end goal of redacting the regulation. And, it will roll back climate regulations on new power plants, known as the New Source rule, which is called a “defacto ban” on building new coal-fired power plants in the country.
The clean coal technology required to meet the rule is cost prohibitive and not yet even commercially viable.
The rule directs the Justice Department to ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold in abeyance current lawsuits opposing the regulations. Nearly 30 states and hundred of groups, firms and companies are suing the agency over the power plant rules.
Rolling back the regulations would help keep coal power plants from prematurely closing down over the next decade. The review that EPA must do to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act could take years, as the official expects the review will be challenged in court.
In other areas, the rule takes aim at Obama-era regulations opposed by industry groups that are meant to control methane emissions from fracking wells.
Both the EPA and the Interior Department have regulations for essentially doing the same thing, limiting emissions of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas that many scientists blame for causing manmade global warming through the burning of fossil fuels.
The methane regulations are part of President Barack Obama’s broad climate agenda issued in 2013, called the Climate Action Plan. But the rule rescinds all six executive orders that make up the Climate Action Plan.
The order has faced weeks of delays because of complex legal questions regarding the Clean Power Plan and EPA climate rules, which are currently under review by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The order is “legally complex,” and the White House was being “very careful” due to the ongoing litigation, the official said.
He said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is “ready to hit the ground running” in conducting the climate rule at the agency. But he said it seems clear there will be litigation, which could take years to resolve.
Big environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club will likely initiate opposition in the courts to the executive order and its actions.
NRDC President Rhea Suh began ramping up support for her group’s legal response to Trump’s assault on EPA in November. Her group is already suing against Trump’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., an ardent supporter of steps to control climate change, plans to introduce legislation in direct response to Trump’s executive orders on Keystone XL and the Clean Power Plan.
“President Trump didn’t issue an executive order today, he issued a declaration of war on American leadership on climate change and our clean energy future,” said Markey.
Markey said Monday that he plans to introduce a slew of bills, including one to transition to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050, another to reform the federal coal leasing program, and a third to “block export of Keystone XL oil and refined product,” while opening up offshore wind energy on the nation’s coasts.
