WASHINGTON – Oil, gas and coal interests that spent millions of dollars to help elect Republicans this year are moving to take advantage of expanded GOP power in Washington and state capitals to thwart Obama administration environmental rules.

Industry lobbyists made their pitch in private meetings last week with dozens of state legislators attending a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an industry-financed conservative state policy organization.

The lobbyists and legislators considered several model bills to be introduced across the country next year designed to give states greater power to block or delay new Obama administration environmental standards, including new limits on power-plant emissions.

The industry's strategy is designed to combat a push by President Obama to carve out climate change as a top priority for his final two years in office. The White House has vowed to continue using executive authority to enact more environmental limits. It could be a key issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

With support from industry lobbyists, many Republicans are planning to make the Environmental Protection Agency a primary political target, presenting it as a symbol of the kind of big-government philosophy they think can unify the GOP's socially and economically conservative wings.

"There is a palpable anger at the EPA in America," said Nate Bell, a Republican state legislator from rural Arkansas who championed a measure at the ALEC meeting supporting the EPA's replacement. "Mention them and you will get laughed out of any coffee shop or feed store in my district."

The power of anti-EPA sentiment in Washington was evident last week when the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, James Inhofe, R-Okla., a vocal denier of science showing a human role in climate change, sent a letter demanding that the EPA withdraw the new power-plant limits.

House Speaker John Boehner and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have discussed how to stop the agency from moving forward, efforts that could include denying funding the EPA would need to enact the regulations.

Meanwhile, underscoring the extent to which fossil-fuel industry allies will pressure Republicans seen as squishy on key issues, the group Americans for Prosperity began an advertising campaign in two dozen House districts after the election, pressing GOP members to oppose tax breaks for wind energy firms.

The organization was founded and funded in part by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.

The industry's aggressive posture following the election is raising anxiety among environmental advocates, some of whom had poured tens of millions of dollars into losing Democratic efforts, but have seen Obama's recent climate actions as triumphs.