By Timothy Gardner and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday he will appoint Republican former Congressman Lee Zeldin, who often voted against legislation on green issues including a measure to stop oil companies from price gouging, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
“He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump, a Republican, will likely look to reverse many rules administered by the EPA on the burning of fossil fuels including one curbing carbon emissions from power plants and another slashing such emissions from vehicles.
Trump has said he plans to begin rescinding EPA and Transportation Department vehicle pollution rules on his first day in office and is considering paring back or eliminating EV tax breaks and other incentives.
Trump also plans to rescind California’s ability to set its own vehicle emissions rules, as he did in 2019.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, reinstated California’s authority. Trump will also decide how to spend billions of dollars in EV charging grants.
As a candidate for New York governor in the 2022 election, Zeldin criticized the state’s decision to join California’s Zero Emission Vehicle program that vows to end the sale of gasoline-powered only vehicles by 2035.
Zeldin, 44, also pressed in that unsuccessful campaign for a reversal of New York’s ban on fracking, a drilling technique opposed by many environmentalists in the state, saying it would create jobs.
“We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI,” Zeldin said on the X social media platform, using the acronym for artificial intelligence. Zeldin will have to be confirmed by the Senate, which regained a Republican majority in this month’s election.
During his time in Congress from 2015 to 2023 as a Representative from New York, Zeldin cast “yes” votes on key pieces of environmental legislation just 14% of the time, according to a scorecard by environmental group the League of Conservation Voters.
The average score in the House of Representatives in 2022, Zeldin’s last year in Congress, was 52%. But his lifetime score topped the 4% average of the four Republican House leaders that year.
Zeldin voted against Biden’s landmark climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which got no Republican votes, and rejected legislation that would crack down on price gouging by oil companies.
In 2016, Zeldin joined the House’s bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, that says it works to combat climate change while protecting U.S. economic prosperity.
“During the confirmation process, we would challenge Lee Zeldin to show how he would be better than Trump’s campaign promises or his own failing 14% environmental score if he wants to be charged with protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and finding solutions to climate change,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president at the League of Conservation Voters.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, David Shepardson, Eric Beech and Nichola Groom; editing by Rami Ayyub, Alistair Bell and Sonali Paul)
