To be clear I'm very not in favor, but the steelman version of the argument is that environmental regulations are well meaning but draw the line at being too restrictive rather than balancing clean air and water with the reality that human activity produces some unnatural byproducts and banning them entirely only works if there's no human activity. You don't want unbreathable air, but the vast majority of human activities and energy production produces some air pollution so you can't reasonably demand air that meets depopulated Earth standards.
That argument is bullshit though because the EPA administrator is saying things like "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion...". That's not the speech of a well meaning person trying to find the right balance between environmental protection and human activity.
We have lots of natural gas, it burns cleaner than coal, and we're strongly embracing LNG exports. Europe doesn't have much natural gas, which would make nuclear a good counterpart to solar, but Greenpeace doesn't like that, so they'll wind up buying our gas.
(The best I can come up with for these specific rule changes is trashing the market for carbon credits neuters a significant cash stream for Tesla.)
> have heard that LNG has a larger carbon footprint than coal
Where? Given we're talking about energy transport, any analysis will be sensitive to the assumptions made about the carbon intensity of said transport.
You also lose ~5% of the energy liquefying it (or more).
Note that their comparison appears to be LNG vs conventional natural gas. So burning gas produced in Pennsylvania in Germany vs burning it it Pennsylvania.
