Virginia became the first state since President Donald Trump abandoned rules to reduce power plant emissions to begin drafting rules to replace the federal mandate.At a press conference on Tuesday morning, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) ordered state air regulators to propose rules by the end of the year to scale back carbon dioxide emissions from the utility sector and increase renewable energy investments throughout the state. “This should be done on the federal level,” McAuliffe told HuffPost by phone ahead of the announcement. “But obviously with the pronouncements now coming out of the Trump administration, we cannot rely on them to do it, so we will be taking it into our own hands on the state level.”The move lays the groundwork for a cap-and-trade system, which would set a fixed limit on the state’s carbon dioxide emissions and allow companies to buy and sell the rights to pollute. Once in place, Virginia will be allowed to participate in the carbon permit trading programs such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.