But executives at the nation’s largest electric utilities say Mr. Trump’s announcement and the eventual fate of the regulations known as the Clean Power Plan make little difference to them. As do most electric utilities, Southern Company plans its investment on a 50-year horizon, the expected life span of a new power plant. Electric utilities have turned away from buying coal and toward the cheaper fuel, a market shift was already underway well before Mr. Obama announced the Clean Power Plan. While Mr. Trump tries to roll back the rules today, executives of electric power generators assume that his successors will eventually reinstate them in some form. American Electric Power was once built entirely around coal.

Source: New York Times April 05, 2017 16:47 UTC