US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to suspend, rescind or flag for review more than a half a dozen measures that were part of former president Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming.

It will include a review of the Clean Power Plan which restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants.

The president’s order will also lift a 14-month-old moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands.

“I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations,” Mr Trump said at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, speaking on a stage lined with coal miners.

The President, who has called global warming a “hoax” invented by the Chinese, has repeatedly criticised the power-plant rule and others as an attack on American workers and the struggling US coal industry.

The contents of the order were outlined to reporters in a briefing from a senior White House official, with his aides insisting he speak without attribution, despite Mr Trump’s criticism of the use of unnamed sources.

Mr Trump accused his predecessor of waging a “war on coal” and boasted in a speech to Congress that he has made “a historic effort to massively reduce job-crushing regulations,” including some that threaten “the future and livelihoods of our great coal miners”.

The order will also chip away at other regulations, including scrapping language on the “social cost” of greenhouse gases.

The administration is still in discussion about whether it intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.