The new pressure from both sides could have an impact on critical permitting decisions on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to natural gas exports and federal coal leases. (Nati Harnik/AP) 
 
 A group of the nation’s leading environmental organizations is breaking with the administration over its energy policy, arguing that the White House needs to apply a strict climate test to all of its energy decisions or risk undermining one of the president’s top ­second-term priorities. 
 
 The rift — reflected in a letter sent to President Obama by 18 groups, including the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and Earthjustice — signals that the administration is under pressure to confront the fossil-fuel industry or risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year. 
 
 For years, the administration has pushed aggressively to limit pollution from coal-fired power plants and improve fuel efficiency in transportation while also embracing domestic production of natural gas, oil and coal under an “all of the above” energy strategy. This has angered environmental groups, which reluctantly went along until Thursday’s break. 
 
 “You can’t have it both ways,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an interview. 
 
 The criticism came on the same day that the fossil-fuel industry and its congressional allies began separate efforts to challenge the administration’s environmental policies. That suggests that the White House will have to marshal additional resources to defend the work it is already doing to address climate change. 
 
 In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama promised to tackle climate change. How is he doing? Nia-Malika Henderson talks to Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone about Obama's environmental policy. (The Washington Post) 
 
 The American Petroleum Institute announced a new advertising and electoral campaign that will promote domestic oil and gas production.At the same time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the Senate can use the Congressional Review Act to reverse a proposed rule to limit carbon emissions from new power plants. 
 
 The new pressure from both sides — one demanding that President Obama reconcile his commitment to fight climate change with his other energy policies, the other pushing him to scale back environmental regulation — could have an impact on critical permitting decisions on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to natural gas exports and federal coal leases. 
 
 The environmental groups’ initiative was perhaps more surprising, given their long support of Obama’s efforts to combat climate change. 
 
 “We believe that continued reliance on an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy would be fundamentally at odds with your goal of cutting carbon pollution and would undermine our nation’s capacity to respond to the threat of climate disruption,” the environmentalists wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “With record-high atmospheric carbon concentrations and the rising threat of extreme heat, drought, wildfires and super storms, America’s energy policies must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, not simply reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” 
 
 The groups suggested that Obama should apply a strict climate test “to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development,” including hydraulic fracturing and coal mining on public lands, as well as drilling in the Arctic Ocean. 
 
 Dan Utech, special assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said in an interview that the administration is “taking a number of steps under the climate action plan to drive down emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases.” 
 
 “At the same time, obviously we’re going to keep using oil and gas for some period of time,” Utech said. “It’s better to produce these things here than import them. They go together, and they’re not really at odds.” 
 
 David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California at San Diego and an energy expert, wrote in an ­e-mail that several factors explain why the administration’s energy policy is plagued by internal conflicts. Since most of it is done through executive authority rather than “with clean new legislation . . . policy gets advanced on a thousand fronts, each with their own constraints.” 
 
 “Some are easy, such as some administrative standards on energy efficiency. Others are much harder, like federal lands policy,” he wrote. 
 
 Decisions about whether the administration should allow the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the Canadian border or permit new liquefied natural gas terminals to be built “are emerging as hot-button issues,” Victor added, because there is more oil and gas to be extracted “than people thought even a few years ago.” 
 
 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), co-chairman of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, said in an interview that while environmentalists are right to push for a rapid transition to clean energy, senior administration officials have made it clear in recent weeks that they’re committed to pursuing that goal. 
 
 “There’s a real warming trend at the White House toward listening to ideas on how to build a bridge to a fully sustainable energy strategy,” he said. 
 
 Jack Gerard, the API president and chief executive who introduced his group’s “America’s Energy, America’s Choice” campaign at the National Press Club on Thursday, said in an interview that the president faces “a test of leadership” on whether he will seize “the chance of a generation to make the United States the energy superpower it can become.” 
 
 Lawmakers are trying to block some of the president’s climate initiatives through the omnibus spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday night. That measure would require the administration to submit a report on its spending on global warming initiatives within 120 days of submitting its next budget request and prohibit it from trying to limit funding for overseas coal plants. 
 
 Heather Zichal, who served as Obama’s top energy and climate adviser until leaving the White House late last year, said the administration has pursued policies that target major sources of greenhouse gas emissions at a time when it faces considerable congressional opposition. 
 
 “As a whole, what this administration has done is gone after the biggest and most meaningful emissions, and they have an agenda that fits the political environment in which they operate,” she said. ||||| A coalition of environmental groups is calling on President Barack Obama to put greater emphasis on combating climate change in his energy policy, pressing the administration as it weighs approving the Keystone XL pipeline. 
 
 The administration’s pursuit of increased domestic oil and gas production jeopardizes progress made toward lowering carbon pollution linked to climate change, according to a letter signed by leaders of 18 U.S. environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. 
 
 “An ‘all of the above’ strategy is a compromise that future generations can’t afford,” the groups wrote in the letter released last night. “It fails to prioritize clean energy and solutions that have already begun to replace fossil fuels, revitalize American industry, and save Americans money.” 
 
 The letter emerged as the U.S. State Department completes work on a final environmental assessment of TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s proposed $5.4 billion pipeline that would carry oil sands crude from Canada to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The project has galvanized environmental groups, which are pushing Obama to reject the project because they say it will increase greenhouse-gas emissions tied to climate change. 
 
 A draft environmental impact review by the State Department concluded the pipeline wouldn’t worsen climate change because the carbon-heavy oil would find its way to market by other means. The agency held a hearing and accepted comments for the environmental impact study, a final version of which hasn’t yet been released. Once it is complete, federal agencies will have 90 days to submit comments on the project’s national interest. 
 
 ‘Climate-Impact Lens’ 
 
 Obama has said he won’t approve Calgary-based TransCanada’s application to build Keystone if it were found to substantially boost carbon-dioxide emissions, which scientists say are raising the Earth’s temperature. 
 
 In their letter, the environmental organizations cited the Keystone project and said that “a climate-impact lens should be applied to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development.” 
 
 The president rejected the company’s initial application to build Keystone after officials in Nebraska said the pipeline would imperil ecologically sensitive lands. TransCanada then split the project in two and applied for the rerouted northern leg in May 2012. 
 
 The letter was reported earlier by The Washington Post. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration, in the first major review of the country’s coal program in three decades, on Friday ordered a pause on issuing coal-mining leases on federal land as part of new executive actions to fight climate change. 
 
 The halt could last three years, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told reporters, while officials determine how to protect taxpayers’ stake in coal sales from public lands and how burning coal could worsen climate change. 
 
 ”We have an obligation to current and future generations to ensure the federal coal program delivers a fair return to American taxpayers and takes into account its impacts on climate change,” Jewell said on a conference call. 
 
 Federal land accounts for over 40 percent of U.S. coal production. Most leases are on public land in Western states, primarily Wyoming, along with Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. 
 
 The review, the administration’s latest move to combat climate change using executive authority rather than wait for congressional action, comes at a tough time for the industry. 
 
 Since 2012, more than 50 coal companies have filed for bankruptcy in the face of competition from cheap natural gas and clean-air regulations that have raised costs for burning the fossil fuel. 
 
 National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said development of coal projects on federal land already took more than 10 years and Friday’s announcement just adds more red tape. 
 
 “The coal supply being cut off by today’s action has been the source of the lowest-cost and most reliable electricity keeping America’s lights on and people working,” he said. 
 
 Republican lawmakers were quick to criticize the reform effort, accusing the administration of “ravaging” coal country. 
 
 “Congress will continue to fight back against the president’s ruthless pursuit of destroying people’s low-cost energy sources in order to cement his own climate legacy,” said U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan. 
 
 President Barack Obama, in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, hinted at the moves, saying he would “change the way we manage our oil and coal resources so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.” 
 
 Environmental groups had pressed the White House for years to freeze fossil fuel leases, arguing that allowing coal development on public land undermines the president’s climate agenda. 
 
 Environmental activists have said that while the coal reform program is a good first step, the administration should extend the review to oil and natural gas for it to meet its goal to slash greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
 “Any good-faith effort to meet international climate targets necessitates that the vast majority of all remaining coal, oil and natural gas on federal lands must stay in the ground,” said Elijah Zarlin, director of climate campaigns at activist group CREDO. 
 
 Jewell said the review will examine concerns flagged by the Government Accountability Office and the Interior Department’s Inspector General, as well as members of Congress and the public. 
 
 She added that the Interior Department will also adopt measures to boost transparency of federal coal leasing. 
 
 Measures include a public database to show the carbon emitted from fossil fuels developed on public lands, posting online pending requests to lease coal or reduce government royalties, as well as capturing methane emissions from mines. 
 
 Jewell said the pause will not apply to existing coal production and that the government will allow mining of metallurgical coal used in making steel, as well as emergency leases if more reserves are needed for power generation. 
 
 “We have plenty of coal,” Jewell said, adding that reserves already under lease are enough to sustain current levels of production from federal land for 20 years.
– President Obama may be stuck between a melting icecap and a hard place. Environmental groups have grown weary of the administration's "all of the above" energy strategy—which has seen it hold tight to domestic natural gas, oil, and coal production even as it works to limit coal-fired power plant pollution—and the fossil-fuel industry is just as peeved. "You can't have it both ways," an environmentalist tells the Washington Post. In a letter sent to Obama yesterday, some 18 groups have announced their displeasure, showing the administration could "risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year," the Post notes. "An 'all of the above' strategy is a compromise that future generations can't afford," the letter reads, per Bloomberg. It suggests what the Post calls a "strict climate test" be applied "to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development," from ocean drilling to the Keystone XL pipeline. Yesterday was a sort of double whammy for Obama, with the American Petroleum Institute announcing a new ad push that will champion domestic oil and gas production, and with Mitch McConnell tasking the Government Accountability Office with figuring out whether the Senate can reverse these emissions limits. This, as a UN report finds our carbon emissions rose slightly last year (though they still fall below 2005 levels) and notes that governments worldwide are spending more money subsidizing fossil fuels than moving toward cleaner energy, the New York Times reports.