US to roll back key climate regulation

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Europe

The writing was on the wall when US President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in June.

Now, US Environmental Protection Agency Chief, Scott Pruitt says the US will roll back the clean power plan, a key emissions reduction approach that would have helped the US meet its commitments under the 2015 deal. It was a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s environmental policy.

At an event in Kentucky, alongside Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, Pruitt said he will sign a proposed rule on Tuesday.

“The EPA and no federal agency should ever use its authority to say to you we are going to declare war on any sector of our economy,” he said.

McConnell, who represents Kentucky, a coal-producing state, has called the plan “a dagger to the heart of the American middle class,” which promises higher electricity costs and living costs.

The Clean Power Plan targeted coal-fired power plant emissions. Those plants made up a third of the nation’s carbon emissions each year and formed a key tool in helping the US meet its emission reductions under the Paris deal.

“It’ll deliver the certainty that will unleash market forces that drive even more innovation and investment, and spur even cleaner power and all sorts of new low-carbon technologies,” former EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy said at the June 2014 announcement of the plan.

But Trump had long promised to pull out of the Paris deal and the Clean Power Plan, and efforts to do so had repeatedly been held up in American courts.

Trump said in June the US plans to “begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.”