US 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.
The move could alter how US agencies weigh regulations on a broad array of industries, from drilling, coal mining and auto manufacturing to refining.
A Trump administration official who reviewed a draft of the order on Tuesday confirmed a Bloomberg News report about the change.
The 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 $US36 per tonne, which will rise to $US50 by 2030.
The Trump order would direct regulators to use a "discount rate" that would dramatically reduce, or eliminate, that cost.
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.
Reuters and others have reported previously that Trump planned to target Obama-era green regulations, including a federal coal mining ban and an initiative forcing states to cut carbon emissions.
The Clean Power Plan was Obama's centrepiece initiative to combat climate change, requiring states to slash emissions of carbon dioxide.
But it was never implemented due to legal challenges launched by several Republican states.
The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, said last week he is not convinced that carbon dioxide from human activity is the main driver of climate change and said he wants Congress to weigh in on whether CO2 is a harmful pollutant that should be regulated.
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