Ledyard King

USATODAY

WASHINGTON — President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday to roll back the Clean Power Plan rule, keeping a campaign vow to undo the Obama administration’s aggressive attempts to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump frequently promised last year to undo the rule, which the Supreme Court blocked from implementation last year while legal challenges are heard.

He told friendly crowds in coal-producing states that lifting carbon restrictions would not only keep energy costs affordable but also help revitalize the coal industry and the communities economically ravaged by environmental regulations.

Trump has called climate change a “hoax” perpetrated by China to gain a competitive advantage. He’s also said he wants to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, the international accord on global warming Obama embraced through his power plan rule.

The budget outline the White House issued earlier this month called for defunding the Clean Power Plan that Obama announced in 2015, which some two dozen states are suing to overturn.

Under Trump’s America First Energy Plan, the budget “reorients EPA’s air program to protect the air we breathe without unduly burdening the American economy.”

On Sunday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt confirmed Trump would be signing the “energy independence” executive order Tuesday.

“For too long, over the last several years, we have accepted a narrative that if you're pro-growth, pro-jobs, you're anti-environment; if you're pro-environment, you're anti-jobs or anti-growth,” Pruitt said Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “We can be both pro-jobs and pro-environment. And the executive order will address the past administration's efforts to kill jobs across this country through the Clean Power Plan.”

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Before running the EPA, Pruitt was the attorney general of Oklahoma, one of the states suing the agency over the rule that would have affected about 1,000 fossil fuel fired power plants with about 3,100 units nationwide.

Trump’s order would also signal further evidence that federal lawyers are unlikely to fight for the plan in court, leaving environmental groups and other organizations to wage its legal defense by themselves.

"On the heels of the three hottest years on record, President Trump is reversing the biggest steps our country has taken to fighting climate change," League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said Monday. "Rolling back these public health protections shows Trump cares more about big polluters than the well-being of our communities."

The rule took effect in 2015 but was stayed by the Supreme Court in February 2016 pending the outcome of the legal challenge.

It was aimed squarely at coal-fired power plants, requires existing power plants to cut harmful emissions compared to 2005 levels. By 2030, the reduction would be 32% for carbon, 90% for sulfur dioxide and 72% for nitrogen oxides.

According to the EPA’s website, the Clean Power Plan seeks to cut “significant amounts of power plant carbon pollution and the pollutants that cause the soot and smog that harm health, while advancing clean energy innovation, development and deployment, and laying the foundation for the long-term strategy needed to tackle the threat of climate change.”

The agency also touts the rules as key to protecting public health “because carbon pollution comes packaged with other dangerous air pollutants.” Having the rule in place, it says, would prevent 3,600 premature deaths, 1,700 heart attacks, 90,000 asthma attacks and 300,000 missed work days and school days each year.

Obama officials depicted the rule as one that gives states and utilities “ample flexibility and the time needed to achieve these pollution cuts ... while expanding the capacity for zero- and low-emitting power sources.”

Opponents do not see it that way.

States are suing because they contend Washington does not have the authority to enact such a sweeping measure that they said would lead to higher electricity costs and reduced reliability of the nation’s power grid.

Paul Bailey, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, applauded the president.

“The Clean Power Plan is the poster child for regulations that are unnecessarily expensive and would have no meaningful environmental benefit," he said. "We look forward to working with EPA Administrator Pruitt to develop sensible policies that protect the environment without shutting down more coal-fueled power plants, one of our most resilient and affordable sources of electricity.”

New Jersey Commissioner of Environmental Protection Bob Martin called the rule “unprecedented regulatory overreach” shortly after it was unveiled. In a letter to the agency, he called it “uncommonly cumbersome, difficult and costly to implement, could undermine reliability, and would yield insufficient results.”