President Trump Signs Executive Order Rolling Back Costly Energy Regulations

President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order that asks federal agencies to review several energy-related policies opposed by the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21^st Century Energy explains the executive order here. To summarize, the order:

• Asks each federal agency to identify rules and policies that “serve as obstacles or impediments to energy production.”
• Rescinds “guidance” issued by the previous administration that encouraged federal agencies to make mitigation of upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions a condition of federal environmental permitting.
• Directs Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to immediately review the agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) regulations on existing fossil-fuel power plants, as well as its New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) rule for new plants, and to begin rescinding or altering them as appropriate. The Metals Service Center Institute opposed these regulations, which would significantly raise electricity prices for American businesses.
• Directs the secretary of Interior to withdraw a 2016 order that imposed a moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands and to resume leasing activities consistent with applicable laws.
• Requires review of a rule that has already entered the courts that established regulations on hydraulic fracturing on federal lands.
• Eliminates the requirement that federal agencies consider climate change when reviewing projects under the National Environmental Policy Act.
• Suspends the use of the social cost of carbon (SCC) in the cost-benefit analyses of proposed regulation. MSCI opposed this calculation.