LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has praised the Trump administration's recent rollback of the Clean Power Plan, a law aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions.
“[This] decision to replace the burdensome so-called Clean Power Plan with the new proposed affordable clean energy rule is a big win for Arkansans,” Rutledge said in a statement. “In a state like Arkansas, where over half of the electricity is responsibly generated from coal-fired power plants, the hit to Arkansas utility ratepayers pocketbooks would have been felt immediately. These increased costs would have obstructed the state’s ability to grow good-paying jobs with fair, reasonable electric rates.
"As a seventh-generation Arkansan raised on a cattle farm and married to a row-crop farmer, I can assure Americans that no one cares about clean air and water more than I do. But I do not favor heavy-handed and unlawful regulations from Washington that will hurt Arkansans.”
Rutledge began fighting the Clean Power Plan with legal action when it was first announced by the Obama administration in 2013.