• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its plan to repeal and replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
• EPA replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which requires coal plants to become more efficient.
• “ACE is an important step towards realigning EPA actions so they are consistent with the rule of law,” a former EPA official said.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its plan to repeal and replace an Obama-era regulation that critics said would cost thousands of coal industry jobs.

EPA will repeal of the Clean Power Plan, which was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court and never went into effect. EPA’s replacement plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, asks states to improve coal plant efficiency.

“ACE is an important step towards realigning EPA actions so they are consistent with the rule of law and the original mission of the agency,” Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official who worked on ACE, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“While it’s well known that the political team believes this to be the case, it’s not as well known that there are many career officials who are equally relieved with returning to EPA’s traditional approach of regulating under this part of the Clean Air Act,” Gunasekara said.

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It’s a massive shift from the Obama administration’s effort to cut power plant greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. The Obama EPA required states to make deep cuts to power sector emissions, including by using more natural gas and renewables.

“We think that goes beyond EPA’s authority and we cannot do that as a matter of law under the Clean Air Act,” a senior EPA official told reporters Wednesday.

A coalition of states, businesses and unions challenged the Clean Power Plan in federal court, calling it EPA overreach. Trump’s EPA agrees with that sentiment. The ACE rule takes a narrower approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.