U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to release a wide-ranging executive order to reduce the role that climate change plays in policy decisions, according to a Trump administration official who reviewed a draft of the order.
The move could alter how U.S. agencies weigh regulations on a broad array of industries, from drilling, coal mining and auto manufacturing to refining.
The official on Tuesday confirmed a Bloomberg News report that the executive order will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to overhaul their use of the “social cost of carbon,” an Obama-era policy that seeks to quantify potential economic damage from climate change for the purposes of drafting regulation.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Love declined to discuss the timing of an executive order on energy. “We have nothing to announce at this time,” she said.
Under rules put in by place by former President Barack Obama, the current cost of carbon in policy decisions is $36 per tonne, which will rise to $50 by 2030. The Trump order would direct regulators to use a “discount rate” that would dramatically reduce, or eliminate, that cost.
Discount rates are used to come up with a net present value of something whose benefits and costs will be distributed over time. In the case of carbon, the impact of emissions on the earth’s climate can take several years to appear.
Under some scenarios referenced in the executive order, carbon could have a zero or “negative value,” the source said. The source said that the order may be an initial step to ultimately phasing out the carbon evaluation entirely.
The executive order could be issued as soon as this week, the source said, and may include other energy-specific measures, like a requirement for the EPA to conduct a review of regulations that could harm energy production.
