Carolina Journal reports:

President-elect Donald Trump is likely to reshape the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and alter some of its most burdensome regulations, which will benefit North Carolina farmers, businesses, and utility ratepayers, state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Donald van der Vaart says.

Two of President Obama’s signature regulations, the Clean Power Plan, and Waters of the United States, whose harshest critics include U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, R-7th District, would be a focus of the new administration, van der Vaart says. …

The Clean Power Plan and WOTUS “are the top of the list for whoever is going to take over the EPA,” van der Vaart said. “It is my belief that neither of those rules are going to go anywhere now that President Trump has been elected.”

Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) would be the most foolhardy, expensive exercise in forced climate virtue-signaling ever. By 2100, the plan would achieve a 0.018-degree (Celsius) reduction in temperature.

Less than two-hundredths of one degree Celsius. Even if you’re sweating that amount (as if anyone could even feel it), is it worth this?

Red tape reduction, too

Trump also announced, as part of his policy plans for his first 100 days, the following:

On regulation, I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated, it’s so important.

Readers familiar with the John Locke Foundation’s work on regulatory reform know this idea already. Trading in old regulations for a new one is a reform we’ve promoted for several years.

Q.v., our Agenda 2016 section on regulatory reform:

Regulatory reciprocity would reduce the total regulatory burden over time by making agencies “trade in” a number of old rules for each new rule. It would also introduce opportunity cost to agency rulemaking, as agencies would have to consider their own trade-offs to creating a new rule.

This approach to red-tape reduction should reduce the regulatory burden over time, incrementally freeing up citizens and industry as it goes.