EPA poised to formally repeal Clean Power Plan in major blow to Obama’s climate legacy
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon formally repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP) in what would be one of the biggest blows yet to former President Barack Obama’s legacy on climate change.
A draft proposal of the EPA’s conclusions, leaked to news outlets over the past 24 hours, argues that the plan — which would limit carbon emissions from power plants and, in the process, drastically reduce the amount of coal-generated electricity in the U.S. — goes beyond the bounds of federal law and unnecessarily hikes energy prices for consumers.
“The EPA proposes to determine that the CPP is not within Congress’s grant of authority to the agency under the governing statute. It is not in the interests of the EPA, or in accord with its mission of environmental protection consistent with the rule of law, to expend its resources along the path of implementing a rule, receiving and passing judgment on state plans, or promulgating federal plans in furtherance of a policy that is not within the bounds of our statutory authority,” the agency says in the document, which is the conclusion of a months-long review of the policy that started shortly after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took charge in February.
“The EPA is proposing to repeal the CPP in its entirety,” the agency says in its draft conclusion.
The CPP, the most controversial of all the environmental measures put forth during the Obama administration, has never gone into effect. Legal challenges and a stay by the Supreme Court kept the plan from becoming a reality.
But the proposal still had a dramatic effect. Utilities shelved coal projects in preparation of the rule, and existing coal-fired facilities were scheduled to shut down since it’d be virtually impossible for them to comply with the new emissions mandates.
