Trump: ‘It’s Time to End the War on Coal’
President Donald Trump’s administration has been in office for less than three weeks, but already the war on coal is being renewed in some parts of the country.
The president on Wednesday issued an executive order aimed at cutting the coal industry’s carbon emissions.
Coal, however, is still one of the most polluting fossil fuels on the planet.
The order is part of Trump’s campaign promise to end the war against coal, and the White House says it is expected to be implemented as soon as early next year.
The new order will create a task force to develop a nationwide strategy to reduce coal use, but it will be up to the states to implement it, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
“We will use the powers of the executive branch to achieve the goal of achieving zero net CO2 emissions from the electricity sector by 2020,” Sanders told reporters on Tuesday.
The Trump administration has pledged to reduce CO2 in the U.S. by about 17 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025, and Sanders said the White’s coal plan will address the coal sector’s role in climate change.
But while the president has pledged that he will not cut back on coal use in the United States, his administration has also been considering how to limit emissions from existing power plants, and some states are now considering ways to do so.
Trump said during the campaign that coal would be phased out as the country moves toward renewable energy.
Sanders said that was an unrealistic goal for coal use to decrease, and she said Trump’s new order is aimed at achieving a target that would allow coal to be phased in.
“This is a plan that will ensure that we can meet the 2025 CO2 emission reduction goal,” Sanders said.
“It’s not about reducing coal consumption.
This is about getting the nation back to zero CO2 from coal.”
A spokesperson for the coal-dependent Wyoming Power Authority told NBC News that it has not yet decided whether to phase out coal-fired power plants.
But state officials told NBC affiliate KWQM in a report that the authority would not be cutting any coal plants in its territory.
The state’s power plants already use about 30 percent less electricity than they used in 2016.
But the agency said it was also looking into ways to cut emissions from power plants in the state, such as by adopting carbon capture and storage technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air.
Trump has repeatedly said that coal is a polluter and has proposed a number of measures to help reduce emissions.
His administration has proposed cutting the power sector’s coal emissions by 28 percent, and he has also called for a nationwide cap-and-trade program that would require polluters to buy electricity from the U,S.
government at lower rates.
Sanders declined to say whether the Trump administration would pursue the strategy of shutting down existing coal plants, or whether the agency would continue to work with the state to reduce their emissions.
The administration’s new coal plan, however in some ways echoes a plan the administration first floated earlier this year.
That plan called for shutting down nearly all coal plants by 2025.