Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Clean Power Plan Before Any Of Its Limits Have Taken Effect, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Carbon Pollution From The Electricity Sector Faced A Federal Ceiling

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rescinding the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era regulation that had established the first federal carbon-pollution limits for the nation's existing power plants, in a White House ceremony at which the President stood beside coal miners holding hard hats and signed paperwork dismantling rules they were never going to be subject to.

The order, titled "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth," directed the EPA to review and rewrite the rule, lifted a moratorium on new coal leases on federal land, and rescinded the federal government's internal guidance on accounting for the social cost of carbon in agency decisions. Officials noted that none of the Clean Power Plan's emissions limits had yet taken effect, because the Supreme Court had stayed the rule in February 2016, meaning the order eliminated the regulation at the moment of its maximum theoretical impact.

"You're going back to work," the President told the miners gathered at the EPA, several of whom had been transported to Washington for the signing. Asked by a reporter whether the order would actually return coal-mining jobs that had been lost primarily to mechanization and the cheaper price of natural gas, a senior administration official said the President "is comfortable with the policy as written and does not believe further analysis is required."

The Clean Power Plan was projected by the EPA's own analysis to prevent approximately 3,600 premature deaths and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year through reductions in fine particulate matter once fully implemented. White House officials confirmed that the President had been briefed on these figures and that the briefing had not changed his position.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who had previously sued the EPA fourteen times in his role as Oklahoma attorney general, signed the implementing memorandum within hours of the ceremony. By the following morning Pruitt had announced an internal review of the regulation, to be conducted by the agency he had spent the previous five years asking federal courts to constrain.

At press time, career EPA scientists were beginning the work of drafting the legal justification for unwinding regulations they themselves had spent the previous decade writing.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who delivered a high-visibility campaign promise to coal-country voters in the first ninety days of his presidency.
§The U.S. coal industry, which obtained federal regulatory relief before any of the rules at issue had taken effect against it.
§Robert Murray and Murray Energy, whose written "action plan" submitted to the incoming administration requested many of the specific reversals contained in the order.
§Federal-land oil and gas operators, whose methane restrictions and the moratorium on new coal leases were lifted by the same executive action.
§Scott Pruitt, whose career-long opposition to the EPA's regulatory authority became official policy from inside the building he now ran.
§Vladimir Putin and other petrostate leaders, whose strategic interest in slowing the global energy transition was advanced by the world's largest economy publicly retreating from its Paris commitments.
§Fossil-fuel donors to the 2016 Republican campaign, who received policy outcomes commensurate with their investment.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment