Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt said that his agency will formulate the Clean Power Plan’s future in early 2018. And while Pruitt said that the agency would “replace” the proposal and not “repeal” it altogether, others are questioning his true intent.

 

That is because Pruitt also told lawmakers last week that he disagrees with the Endangerment Finding, which gets to the heart of EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 as an emission under the Clean Power Plan. The US Supreme Court has affirmed that right under the Endangerment Finding, although Pruitt said he intends to lead a national discussion on the data that the Obama EPA used to arrive at its conclusion that CO2 was a danger human health and the environment.

 

“They took work from the U.N. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] … and adopted that as the core of the finding,” Pruitt told the House Energy and Commerce Committe. That, he continued, was a “breach of process.”

 

“I think one of the most important things we can do for the American people is provide that discussion, and it hasn’t happened,” Pruitt added. “As I indicated, the agency borrowed the work product of a third party. We have to ensure that discussion occurs.”