Last week President Trump signed an executive order to roll back Obama’s Clean Power Plan. That plan had created regulations on CO2 emissions, especially for the coal-fired power plants that produce a large share of the country’s greenhouse gases.
Analysts say the roll-back of the plan will take quite a while, especially because consumer and environmental groups have vowed to fight Trump’s measure in court. And even if Trump’s executive order makes it through litigation, the measure may not have much impact on coal production in the West. That’s according to an article published in High Country News last Tuesday. It says renewable energy in the West will continue to increase even if the progress is slower than it would have been under the Obama climate rules. To find out more, I talked with the author of the article, Elizabeth Shogren. She’s the Washington, D.C. correspondent for High Country News.