Mr Pruitt also refused to confirm – despite widespread consensus in the global scientific community – that carbon emissions released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like coal are what cause global warming and climate change.

Some of the goals outlined in Mr Pruitt’s plan include “issue permits more quickly” to private companies and wanting to “rebalance” the federal role in environmental regulation by pushing more of that responsibility to the state level.

Mr Pruitt also wants to enforce environmental law “as Congress intended.”

The language in the report is one more step in achieving Mr Trump’s campaign promise to totally dismantle Mr Obama’s environmental legacy.

Climate change Agreement

The President withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change in June, an accord signed by nearly 200 countries in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poorer countries adapt to an already-changed planet.

Mr Trump said the agreement put American workers at an “economic disadvantage.”

The Trump administration has also announced a plan to repeal and possibly replace a centerpiece of Obama-era environmental legislation: the Clean Power Plan.

The CPP, called a “game changer” by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2015 after it passed into law, regulates the carbon emissions of power plants.

According to the Washington DC-based organisation, power plants account for almost 40 per cent of the country’s emissions – “more than every car, truck, and plane in the US combined.”

Had the CPP implemented it would have reduced power plants’ carbon emissions by 2030 to a level 32 per cent lower than they in 2005.

The Obama administration saw it as the main means of meeting targets outlined in the Paris Agreement.

The public has until the end of October to send comment on the strategic plan to the EPA and it will submitted to Congress in its final form in February 2018.