By Lisa Friedman

November 16, 2018 - President Trump today said he intends to nominate Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to be the permanent administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Andrew Wheeler

The EPA has been at the center of the Trump administration’s agenda to reduce the regulations on industry, and Wheeler has been instrumental in seeing through rollbacks of major environmental policies. The changes include proposals to weaken the Obama administration’s signature policies to combat climate change, including a sweeping regulation on emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rule reining in pollution from vehicle tailpipes.

Trump made the announcement about Wheeler while leading a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House. Referring to Wheeler, he said, “Acting administrator, who I tell you is going to be made permanent, he’s done a fantastic job and I want to congratulate him.”

In an interview at EPA headquarters earlier in the day, Wheeler, who has served as acting head of the agency since Scott Pruitt resigned in July amid federal ethics inquiries, said he wanted the job.

“At this point, yes, I would like to be nominated to be the administrator,” Wheeler said in the interview, before Trump’s announcement. “I think I’m making a difference. This is a transitional time for the agency. We’ve started a number of initiatives that I’d like to see through to conclusion.”

Wheeler joined the EPA in April as deputy administrator. After Pruitt’s departure, Trump appointed him to lead the agency on an interim basis.

Since then, Wheeler has distinguished himself among top officials in the Trump administration for his low-key, under-the-radar style, even as he has worked diligently and methodically to advance Trump’s deregulatory agenda.

While Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, gained notice for his political ambition and close ties to the president, he also faced allegations that he used his office to seek special favors, such as employment opportunities for his wife, and that he overspent on personal security and travel.

And while Pruitt won Trump’s praise for putting forth dozens of policy moves designed to tear down former President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, many of those have since been challenged or struck down by the courts.

Wheeler, on the other hand, has led the professional life of a technocrat, avoiding the limelight in favor of carefully advancing his boss’s agenda. Both his supporters and critics say Wheeler’s history as a coal lobbyist, former EPA official and senior Senate staffer could make him far more formidable at effectively advancing Trump’s deregulation policies, while avoiding the political spotlight or ethical pitfalls that derailed his predecessor.

“I would say he’s been absolutely as relentless and faithful to the agenda as Pruitt was,” said Joseph Goffman, who previously served as chief counsel to EPA’s air chief in the Obama administration.

Wheeler began his career at the EPA in the 1990s before working in the Senate for more than a decade with James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma. Senator Inhofe is one of the most prominent members of Congress who denies the established science of human-caused climate change.

Wheeler later became a lobbyist at the Faegre Baker Daniels consulting firm, where his top client was the coal magnate Robert E. Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy. Over a period of eight years, Murray paid Wheeler’s firm more than $2.7 million.

Murray, a champion of the coal industry and a strong supporter of Trump, lobbied senior officials at the White House last year with a wish list of actions he wanted to see the administration take. The items included withdrawing to the Paris climate agreement and rolling back Obama’s signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan, which was designed to reduce planet-warming emissions from coal plants and encourage renewable energy.

During Wheeler’s confirmation hearing to be EPA deputy administrator, and later when he became acting administrator, he acknowledged working with Murray to fight the Clean Power Plan. But he said he had no substantive involvement with the memos that Murray wrote outlining his regulatory wish list. Wheeler also said he did not lobby EPA on Murray’s behalf after the 2016 election, knowing he might join the Trump administration.

Senator Inhofe said this week that, should Wheeler be nominated to lead the agency, he would expect the confirmation to be straightforward. “I know there is no opposition to him,” the senator said. “He is of course the favorite of the president, and of mine.”

Wheeler won Senate confirmation to the No. 2 position at the agency on a mostly party-line vote, with three Democrats supporting him. It is not clear that he will have unanimous Republican support to be administrator.

Some environmentalists said Friday that Wheeler’s past lobbying on behalf of the coal industry should disqualify him from leading an agency with a mission of protecting human health and the environment. Some Democrats in the Senate have also expressed reservations.

Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the leading Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees the E.P.A., said this week that, while he liked Wheeler and considered him an improvement over Pruitt, he was not ready to support his formal ascent to head of the agency.

“We need to make progress, especially in reducing the carbon sources from the biggest source in the environment, the mobile fleet,” Senator Carper said, referring to the EPA plan to loosen auto emissions standards.

Wheeler in the Friday morning interview cited the plan to relax auto emissions rules as one that he wanted to see through as administrator, as well as his replacement of the Clean Power Plan for coal-fired power plants, and a clean-water rule that clarifies which wetlands and small waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act.

When Wheeler joined the E.P.A., he found an agency in turmoil. Morale was at a low and career biologists, chemists and others were leaving.

Pruitt’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, declined to comment.

Wheeler’s first move as acting administrator was to cast off Pruitt’s personal security team. He also made a point of inviting career employees into policy briefings, and visiting all 10 of the agency’s regional offices, something Pruitt did not do.

The shadow of Pruitt still looms over Wheeler, who said in the interview Friday that he preferred not to discuss his former boss. “I try not to talk about Scott Pruitt or the differences between us,” he said. But, he added, “I get a lot of thank-yous from the staff just for being with them, talking to them.”