The Trump administration has rolled back a landmark Obama-era rule that sought to wean the nation’s electrical grid off coal-fired power plants and their climate-damaging pollution.
Its replacement gives individual states wide discretion to decide whether to require limited efficiency upgrades at individual coal-fired power plants.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler calls it a sign that “fossil fuels will continue to be an important part of the mix” in the U.S. energy supply.
Joseph Goffman, an EPA official under President Barack Obama, said he feared that the Trump administration was trying to set a legal precedent that the Clean Air Act gives the federal government “next to no authority to do anything” about climate-changing emissions from the country’s power grid. The Obama rule, adopted in 2015, sought to reshape the country’s power system by encouraging utilities to rely less on dirtier-burning coal-fired power plants and more on electricity from natural gas, solar, wind and other lower or no-carbon sources.
Burning of fossil fuels for electricity, transportation and heat is the main human source of heat-trapping carbon emissions.
California officials criticized the Trump administration’s latest move and said the state will initiate a legal challenge. Although California does not have coal power plants, it does import coal power from neighboring states.
“EPA and the Trump administration are backsliding,” said Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general. “They’re bending over to special interests at the expense of the public interest.”
In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the new rule “fails to protect Americans from the rising environmental and health costs of climate change — and our children will pay the most because of dirty air, deadly heat waves, droughts and wildfires.”
Supporters of the revised rule say the Obama-era plan overstepped the EPA’s authority.
“This action is recalibrating EPA so it aligns with being the agency to protect public health and the environment in a way that respects the limits of the law,” said Mandy Gunasekara, a former senior official at the EPA who helped write the replacement rule. She now runs a nonprofit, Energy45, that supports President Trump’s energy initiatives.
“The Clean Power Plan was designed largely to put coal out of business,” Gunasekara said. Trump’s overhaul is meant to let states “figure out what is best for their mission in terms of meeting modern environmental standards” and providing affordable energy, she said.
Democrats and environmentalists say the Trump administration has repeatedly sought to use the power of government to protect the sagging U.S. coal industry from competition against cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas and solar and wind power while ignoring scientific warnings about climate change.
