Carbon emission proposals to boost Trump’s drive to revive coal

The Trump administration has drawn up proposals to replace Obama-era rules on carbon dioxide emissions with measures to support coal-fired power plants.

This is part of Trump’s plan to fulfill his campaign pledge to “put our miners back to work”.

Draft versions of proposed rules on carbon emissions from electricity generation, due to be announced this week, include measures that could push utilities to invest in coal-fired plants to make them more efficient and competitive.

The New York Times says the Trump administration “plans to formally propose a vast overhaul of climate change regulations that would allow individual states to decide how, or even whether, to curb carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants”.

Meanwhile, Associated Press reports that “conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the US, the Trump administration has declared in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for efficient cars and other conservation programmes…The position was outlined in a memo released last month, without fanfare and in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards.”