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"Whatever they do in Washington, they can't change the facts," Brown said during a state of the state address days after Trump's inauguration. "And these are the facts: The climate is changing, the temperatures are rising, and so are the oceans. Natural habitats everywhere are under increasing stress. The world knows this." Months earlier, Brown had signed legislation requiring the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 — an ambitious goal compared with past targets. Weeks earlier, the state had hired an outside legal team that includes former U.S. attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to help defend its environmental and other policies in the age of Trump. Some of the nation's biggest utilities also say that shelving the Clean Power Plan will have little effect on their long -term actions, which aren't aimed at four -year presidential cycles but involve looking decades ahead. "[Our] long -term strategy is focused on generating and delivering electricity in ways that meet the needs and expectations of our customers," Nick Akins, chief executive of American Electric Power, one of the nation's largest utilities, said in an email. "That includes diversifying our fuel mix and investing in renewable generation and other innovations that increase efficiency and reduce emissions. That won't change." AEP's 2016 carbon dioxide emissions were already 44 percent below 2000 levels, and Akins said the company expects further declines as it adds more natural gas and renewable power generation. It plans to invest about $1.5 billion in renewable energy over the next three years. Marijke Shugrue, a spokeswoman for another major utility, NRG, said the company "set our sustainability goals back in 2014 unconnected to the Clean Power Plan. Whatever happens to that, our goals still stand. It made sense before, and it still makes sense." The plan set a goal of reducing NRG's carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030. Investors also understand that operating coal plants these days can be bad for the bottom line. After the owners of the 40- year -old Navajo Generating Station in Arizona announced Feb. 13 that they would close the station's coal -fired power plant, Moody's Investors Service called the decision "credit positive" for the owners. Closing the enormous 2,250- megawatt facility — the largest coal plant west of the Mississippi River — "reduces risks associated with the coal -fired units meeting environmental standards," Moody's said. In addition, the shutdown "brings economic benefits to ratepayers." At the Environmental Defense Fund, Munson expects renewable energy will continue to surge even in states that lack renewable portfolio standards. "Look at Texas," he said. "Not exactly a font of progressive policies." Even so, Texas is home to one - fourth of the nation's wind capacity, with more on the way. On Nov. 27, wind energy set a record there, providing 45 percent of the state's total electricity demand that day. Overall, wind provides 12.7 percent of the state's electricity, and projects underway will bring that to about 16 percent when finished.