Climate Changed
Trump Proposes Unwinding Obama's Coal-Plant Pollution Curbs
- Move could prolong uncertainty over U.S. electricity mix
- EPA plan would give states authority to set their own limits
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President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday unveiled its plan to dramatically weaken carbon dioxide limits on coal-fired power plants by shifting most of the regulatory burden to states in a further assault on the Obama climate legacy.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s "Affordable Clean Energy" proposal would replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan’s sweeping changes in the U.S. electricity mix with more modest emissions curbs at individual power plants. It would set pollution guidelines based on assumptions about what improvements could be eked out through efficiency upgrades at the facilities, then give states the latitude to design their own plans for paring carbon dioxide emissions at the sites.