U.S. leader Donald Trump is poised to replace former President Barack Obama's plan to slash power plant greenhouse gas emissions with a substitute that could actually increase them.
The move, combined with a rollback of automobile efficiency mandates proposed earlier this month, represents a significant retreat from the fight against climate change by a president who's already vowed to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement. Transportation and electric generation are the biggest sources of heat-trapping gas emissions in the U.S., accounting for 56 percent of the total in 2016, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "The administration is taking aim at the two most significant climate protections that our nation has put in place to address the threat of climate change," said Tomas Carbonell, director of regulatory policy at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Where Obama envisioned sweeping changes across the nation's electric grid, Trump's replacement focuses on boosting efficiency at coal-fired power plants, according to people familiar with the proposal who asked not to be identified describing an internal document. Those efficiency gains could encourage utilities to run their power plants more often, undercutting environmental benefits. The release of the new plan, expected within days, comes during a summer dominated by wildfires and hotter-than-normal weather. Northern Europe has withered in a deadly heat wave. California recorded its hottest July on record as its forests burned on an unprecedented scale. At least 116 people in Japan have died this summer, with the country posting its highest-ever temperatures in July. Meanwhile, parts of India are dealing with the worst flooding in a century.