Trump dials back Obama policy asking agencies to reduce emissions

President Trump late Thursday replaced an executive order signed by former President Obama that sought to reduce federal agencies’ energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The revocation came as part of a late-night executive order that instructs agencies to set their own goals for efficiency and “prioritize actions that reduce waste, cut costs, enhance the resilience of Federal infrastructure and operations, and enable more effective accomplishment of its mission.”

Obama signed the original order in 2015, with a goal of reducing the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent in a decade. It asked agencies to reduce buildings’ energy use by 2.5 percent per year, use clean energy for 25 percent of their energy needs and shrink water use by 36 percent.

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Obama saw the measure as a key part of his pledge to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2030.

But Trump has dismantled Obama’s environmental and climate agenda piece by piece, including major regulations and the emissions-cut pledge.

Trump’s new order, signed Thursday, only asks agencies to set their own goals, and to track their progress toward them, replacing the prescriptive targets in the Obama order.

It also directs the heads of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget, both White House offices, to work to streamline the various energy and environmental requirements agencies must follow, in an attempt to make compliance more efficient.