TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey is dropping out of the Northeast's program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday, calling the pact a failure at cutting pollution and a burden to taxpayers.

The decision to withdraw from the 10-state cap-and-trade program at the end of the year marks a turnaround for New Jersey, a heavily industrialized state that was an early backer of efforts to curb the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

Environmentalists were dismayed, while conservatives were thrilled.

"This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future," said Christie, a first-term governor and rising GOP star who has been widely mentioned as potential presidential candidate because of his combative stands on teacher unions, government spending and taxes. "It is a failure."

The federal Environmental Protection Agency urged him to reconsider.

"This is a disappointing step given New Jersey's legacy of leadership on environmental issues," said EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. The EPA's administrator, Lisa Jackson, was chief of New Jersey's environmental agency when the state joined the pact, which went into effect in 2008.

Christie is just the latest Republican governor to announce that his state would withdraw from a regional pact to reduce greenhouse gases. Similar agreements in the West and Midwest are struggling. And efforts by the Obama administration to establish a national cap-and-trade program have failed in Congress.

The Northeastern pact, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, sets limits on carbon dioxide emissions by fossil fuel-burning power plants and requires them to buy permits to release such gases. The permits can be bought and sold among plants, giving them a financial incentive to operate more cleanly.

The cap-and-trade pact "does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment," Christie said. Residential customers in states that participate in the pact paid an average of about 73 cents extra on their monthly electric bill to fund the program.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, disputed the governor's assessment of the pact's effectiveness, saying it is working as designed.

He said New Jersey's greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants had declined 10 percent since 2009. He said the pact was responsible for creating 18,000 jobs in the region and generating $2.3 billion in economic benefits.

The immediate effects of New Jersey's pullout could be small. After Christie's announcement, a majority of the other participating Northeastern states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont - indicated their intention to stay in the pact.