Biden to immediately crack down on fossil fuels, revoke Keystone XL permit

President-elect Joe Biden's administration will crack down on fossil fuels on his first day in office, according to his transition team.

Biden is expected to direct sweeping environmental regulatory changes over the next four years and reverse some Trump-era deregulatory policies in an effort to tackle climate change.

The new administration's crackdown on fossil fuels will include stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, reimposing a moratorium of coal leasing on federal lands, tightening fracking regulations on public lands; directing federal agencies to revise energy standards; and reinstating the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.

"He will sign a broad executive order that takes steps that are imperative to address our climate crisis and will create good union jobs and advance environmental justice," the president-elect's national climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said Tuesday, adding that Biden will also reverse "more than 100 of the previous administration’s harmful policies."

On Day One, Biden will revoke a presidential permit for construction of the $9 billion, 1,200-mile pipeline that would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, according to a list of executive actions provided to FOX Business.

FARMERS FEAR BIDEN'S CLIMATE REGULATIONS WILL BE 'HOT MESS' FOR INDUSTRY

It is unclear how the Biden administration plans to address job losses that would come with ending construction of the massive pipeline, but his $2 trillion clean energy infrastructure plan, with its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, aims to "create millions of good-paying jobs that provide workers with the choice to join a union."

Biden also plans to create 250,000 jobs "plugging abandoned oil and natural gas wells" as part of the infrastructure plan.

President Trump had overturned President Barack Obama's decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which for years was under scrutiny from environmentalists and Democratic politicians.

The Trump administration also reversed an Obama-era ban federal coal mining ban soon after he took office in 2017.

Former President Obama issued the temporary ban on federal coal mining in January of 2016 as part of an economic review of the practice.

Some experts have argued that without federal impediments, coal could continue ... (Read more)

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