Overnight Energy: Trump’s climate order pushed back

CLIMATE ORDER NOT COMING THIS WEEK: President Trump’s executive order to start rolling back the Clean Power Plan is “unlikely” to be signed this week, according to a White House official.

The official told Greenwire Wednesday that the order “may be pushed to next week.” The official did not provide further details or timing information, according to the report.

White House officials had previously said that the executive order would be signed this week.

The order is expected to instruct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start the process of repealing former President Barack Obama’s landmark climate rule for power plants, fulfilling a key campaign promise Trump made.

It will be the second presidential action aimed at undoing a major Obama EPA rule, following on last week’s order to unravel the Waters of the United States rule.

{mosads}The climate rule would have ordered a 32 percent cut to the power sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, through individual reductions assigned to states. It is on hold thanks to a Supreme Court stay.

The same order is expected to instruct the Interior Department to stop Obama’s moratorium on new coal mining leases on federal land.

Read more here.

TRUMP ALLY FIRES BACK: Trump ally and adviser Carl Icahn is firing back at a left-leaning group that accused him and a fuel refining company he owns of violating a law that requires lobbyists to register.

“Public Citizen’s assertion that I should be required to register as a lobbyist is another gross misstatement of the facts which is similar to much of the ‘fake news’ that is unfortunately so prevalent today,” Icahn wrote in an opinion piece in The Hill.

“I have vetted my activities with a number of lawyers and it is clear that no registration is required.”

Earlier Wednesday, Public Citizen sent a formal complaint to House and Senate officials seeking an investigation into whether Icahn and CVR Energy should be registered to lobby.

Icahn is a “special adviser” to Trump on regulatory matters, but not employed by the government.

He has pressed Trump and the EPA to make a change to the federal ethanol mandate that could save CVR hundreds of millions of dollars.

Public Citizen defended itself after Icahn’s response.

“The fact that Carl Icahn continues to believe that there’s nothing wrong with his inherent conflict of interest is stunning,” Tyson Slocum, director of the group’s energy program, said in a statement.

“This is not about the underlying merits of the Bush-era law (the Renewable Fuel Standard). This instead has everything to do with the absence of transparency and the presence of massive financial conflicts of interest posed by Icahn’s special adviser role,” he said. “An independent investigation is needed to determine whether he and his companies are in compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act.”

Read more here.

IVANKA’S LANDLORD SUING US OVER MINING BAN: The landlord for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s Washington, D.C., home, is suing the federal government over a mining ban in Minnesota, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Andrónico Luksic, a Chilean billionaire, has a pending lawsuit against the Interior Department.

He’s been trying to establish the Twin Metals mine on federal land in Minnesota, but the Obama administration established a ban on mining in that area in December.

Read more here.

ON TAP THURSDAY: The House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water subpanel will hold a hearing to gather the views of members of Congress on its 2018 funding bill.

AROUND THE WEB:

A Florida Senate committee passed legislation that would ban hydraulic fracturing in the state, the Miami Herald reports.

The cold snap in Washington, D.C., has pushed the peak cherry blossom estimate back to March 14 to 17, the Washington Post reports.

A trickle of former residents near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have started to move in as Japan marks the sixth anniversary of the meltdown disaster, Reuters reports.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out Wednesday’s stories…

-Ivanka Trump’s landlord suing US government: report

-Trump order on Obama’s climate rule ‘unlikely’ this week

-Watchdog: Trump ally Carl Icahn violating lobbying rules

Please send tips and comments to Timothy Cama, tcama@digital-staging.thehill.com; and Devin Henry, dhenry@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @Timothy_Cama, @dhenry, @thehill