Environmentalists were bracing themselves Tuesday for the signing of an executive order by President Trump that will set wheels in motion to dismantle the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The immediate impact for the renewables industry falls somewhere between muted and non-existent.
If the CPP were indeed scrapped — a complicated regulatory process that would take a year or more, and faces many obstacles — the two most likely outcomes would be adding a few years of operational life to some existing coal-fired power plants and further undermining US credibility on climate change on the global stage, even if Trump does not order the US to pull out of the Paris climate deal.
