Overnight Energy: EPA to propose Clean Power Plan repeal | Pruitt takes on wind, solar tax credits | Committee to mark up antiquities reform

The Hill quoted Myron Ebell on the effects which the ‘Clean Power’ Plan raised consumer rates for electricity and threatened stability of America’s electrical grid. 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt announced Monday that the formal proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan is coming soon.

Pruitt told a Kentucky audience that he’ll sign the proposal Tuesday, kicking off the process toward undoing one of former President Obama’s signature priorities.

“The Clean Power Plan, it wasn’t about regulating to make things regular,” Pruitt said Monday at an event with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to raucous applause. “It was truly about regulating to pick winners and losers.”

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The Obama rule was expected to significantly hurt the coal industry since coal-fired power plants are the biggest carbon emitters. But Pruitt’s announcement was also a rebuke of what he and Republicans see as Obama’s “war on coal.” He and other Republicans are opposed to what they see as numerous regulations that have hurt the coal industry, which was already reeling from competition from cheap natural gas.

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Myron Ebell, head of the energy and environment program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, cheered the proposed repeal as a step toward getting rid of the rule completely.

“If it had gone into effect, the ‘Clean Power’ Plan rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas power plants would have been one of the most expensive regulations ever imposed, causing electric rates for consumers to go up and threatening the reliability of the electric grid,” he said in a statement.

Read the full article at The Hill.