The Clean Power Plan is a 2015 regulation that aimed to hasten the electric power industry’s shift away from coal and toward greener sources of energy, its repeal has been a key point for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (pictured) and President Donald Trump. | Getty Images Trump moves to cancel landmark Obama climate change rule

The Trump administration officially moved to kill the Obama-era climate change rule for power plants Tuesday, fulfilling a campaign pledge but setting off what is expected to be a bitter legal battle between the EPA and several states, health and environmental groups.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an agency proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which would have sped the nation's shift away from coal-burning power plants and toward renewable power and natural gas, which emits less planet-warming carbon dioxide. Less than a third of U.S. emissions come from the power sector, and the rule aimed to shrink them to about 15 percent below 2015 levels by 2030.


Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general who sued Obama’s EPA over the rule, claims that it would have cost $33 billion and is illegal because it pushed for a transition away from coal rather than directly limiting emissions from coal plants. EPA released a photo of Pruitt signing the document but did not hold a public event.

EPA is exploring writing a replacement that would let states set their own standards to require coal plants to run more efficiently, or burn less coal while producing the same amount of power. That would likely achieve few emissions reductions.

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“The Obama administration pushed the bounds of their authority so far with the CPP that the Supreme Court issued a historic stay of the rule, preventing its devastating effects to be imposed on the American people while the rule is being challenged in court,” Pruitt said in a press release. “We are committed to righting the wrongs of the Obama administration by cleaning the regulatory slate. Any replacement rule will be done carefully, properly, and with humility, by listening to all those affected by the rule.”

The Trump administration has hailed the withdrawal as a victory for coal, but market experts say the outlook for the fuel is still dim.

"Withdrawing the Clean Power Plan won’t clear the deck for new coal generation. The economics of natural gas and renewables are more favorable, now and in our future scenarios,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance Policy Editor Steph Munro said.

During President Barack Obama’s two terms, the fracking boom turned the U.S. into a natural gas super power, cutting the cost of the fuel by 75 percent and leading to a boom in natural gas-power generation, which tripled between 2009 and 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Wind power also surged under Obama, tripling in capacity, while solar power grew from virtually zero to become the leading source of new power generation in 2016.

Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said the withdrawal will give cooperatives, which are owned by customers rather than investors, flexibility to decide when to take coal plants offline. Those co-ops got 62 percent of their power from coal in 2016, compared to 71 percent just two years before, he said.

Still, Matheson wants EPA to write a replacement rule to provide business certainty to the utilities, although he acknowledged that process could take years.

“To the extent we can have a level of clarity over time about what the playing field looks like, that matters,” he said. Many electricity companies believe that if Pruitt's EPA can write a replacement rule, it will be more difficult for a future administration to challenge than if he takes no action at all. Critics have contended that Pruitt plans to slow-walk the process.

Conservative groups praised the repeal, with lobbying group Americans for Prosperity saying it would prevent “dramatically higher” energy costs.

Health advocates say Trump’s EPA is vastly overstating the costs of the rule while ignoring the impacts of climate change and other pollutants that come from coal plants, especially by declining to count the benefits of reducing those emissions in an analysis of the Clean Power Plan.

When EPA finalized the Clean Power Plan, the agency estimated that by 2030 it would annually prevent 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 childhood asthma attacks and 1,700 heart attacks.

“These are not insignificant benefits, health effects,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president of advocacy at the American Lung Association. “I don’t necessarily agree with the dollar amount they place on the cost of a human life, but it does create a basis for doing comparisons across rules … to translate those health effects into dollars costs."

More than half of states sued to stop the Clean Power Plan, and the Supreme Court in early 2016 stayed its implementation while a lower court considered the challenge.

EPA has been asking the court to withhold its decision about whether the rule was legal until the agency has had a chance to withdraw it and explore an alternative.

Tim Profeta, director of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, said EPA is nixing the rule now to keep the court from issuing a decision.

“The court should decide the case that it has before it in order to clear up any dispute over the extent of EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants,” Profeta said.

Since Trump's election, 14 green-leaning states have banded together as part of the Climate Alliance and said they will aim to curb emissions even without the federal government.

“We will push ahead and work with states that share our belief in science and the imperative to combat global warming,” California Gov. Jerry Brown said.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee added that “Washington state is already feeling the harmful and costly effects of climate change — in more devastating wildfire seasons, strained water resources, increasingly acidic coastal waters, and more. And we are taking action to respond.”

Inslee argued that “the United States Supreme Court has ruled on three separate occasions that the EPA has a responsibility, under the Clean Air Act and other federal laws, to protect American communities from harmful carbon pollution.”

The Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that EPA would have authority to regulate carbon if the agency found it to be a danger to public health. EPA subsequently decided that carbon is a pollutant. For Pruitt to avoid climate regulations outright, he would have to fight that finding, which many legal experts say is a losing battle.

Eric Wolff contributed to this report

