Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

Obama's Clean Power Plan Might Be Dead In D.C., But States Are Rebuilding It Themselves

Fast Company: On May 16, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed Executive Directive 11, which mandates that the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) begin developing a regulatory framework for reducing carbon emissions from power plants.

The announcement comes as a thinly veiled rebuke of the president, who in late March signed an executive order on “energy independence,” pledging to make good on his impossible promise of reviving the imploding coal industry, and his misguided promise of rolling back environmental regulations that he falsely claims are hindering the economy. To accomplish this, Trump pledged to stop the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, a strategy introduced by Barack Obama in 2015 to reduce emissions from power plants to 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.

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