Trump orders review of CO2 rules: Update

Updates throughout to reflect singing of order

President Donald Trump today directed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider two major regulations affecting coal-fired power plants as part of an effort to curtail the previous administration's efforts to address climate change.

Trump signed an executive order taking aim at former president Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan and a companion rule setting CO2 limits for new power plants.

The president directed EPA to undertake an "immediate re-evaluation" of the power plant regulations and decide whether to repeal or revise them. "Perhaps no single regulation threatens our miners, energy workers more than this crushing attack on American industry," Trump said.

The order is intended to help push the US toward energy independence and refocus EPA on its "core mission" of ensuring clean air and safe drinking water. It also serves as an overall rebuke of Obama's effort to address climate change, which had infuriated fossil fuel producers.

"My administration is putting an end to the war on coal," Trump said.

The order also targets a number of other Obama administration actions, including ordering a review of methane rules for oil and gas, ending a moratorium on coal leases on federal land and rescinding guidance on the use of the social cost of carbon estimate to help measure the effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Former EPA officials who helped craft the regulations called Trump's executive order a dangerous move that is "embarrassing" the US.

"The administration's ‘Back to the Future' environmental policy might be funny if it were a movie, but it is real life," former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said. "They want us to travel back to when smokestacks damaged our health and polluted our air, instead of taking every opportunity to support clean jobs of the future."

Their allies in Congress vowed to do what they could to defend the rules, but acknowledged that any legislative efforts will not make it far in the Republican-controlled Congress. "Today's executive order calls into question America's credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest environmental challenge of our lifetime," said US senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware), the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

But industry groups that had sued EPA to overturn the power plant rules said Trump's action will provide much needed regulatory relief and boost US energy security. "These executive actions are a welcome departure from the previous administration's strategy of making energy more expensive through costly, job-killing regulations," US Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue said.

The administration has no timetable for completing the regulatory review. EPA will have to conduct a formal rule-making process, which could take more than a year to complete. And supporters of the regulations are already promising to take the administration to court.

"We will not surrender our children's future to fossil fuel profits without a fight," Natural Resources Defense Council president Rhea Suh said.

The Clean Power Plan requires states to develop plans to cut CO2 from existing power plants from 2022-2030, which EPA has said will result in a 32pc reduction in emissions. The new unit standards limit emissions from new coal-fired generators to no more than 1,400lb CO2/MWh.

Trump's order does not address EPA's 2009 endangerment finding for GHG emissions, which the agency used as the foundation for its regulatory efforts. It also will not answer the question of whether the US should remain in the Paris climate agreement. That issue "is still under discussion," a senior administration official said.

While the order may keep the door open to EPA regulating power plant emissions in some fashion, the White House does not believe the agency is legally required to set any standards, despite the endangerment finding.

"I do not believe there is an obligation under Section 111(d) or (b)," the senior administration official said, referring to the two sections of the Clean Air Act under which EPA issued the power plant rules. EPA issued the 2009 finding under Section 202 of the law, which deals with automobiles.

As part of the review, EPA will ask the DC Circuit Court of Appeals essentially to delay issuing a ruling in the litigation that dozens of states, utilities and industry groups filed to overturn the Clean Power Plan. The court heard oral arguments last fall but has yet to issue a ruling in the case. The US Supreme Court put the regulation on hold last year pending the outcome of the litigation.