Natural gas prices inched up Monday after details emerged of a federal plan to curb power plant emissions. Natural gas for July delivery is up 3.6 cents, or 0.8%, at $4.578 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to propose mandating power plants cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions 30% by 2030 from levels of 25 years earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday evening. Its biggest impact is expected to be in cutting the demand for coal, natural gas’s primary competitor as a fuel for power plants. The plan sets a distant goal that isn’t as severe as some environmentalists had advocated, so it isn’t clear it creates pressure on the more near-term futures markets, said Teri Viswanath, a natural-gas strategist at BNP Paribas. But with weather forecasts that cooled over the weekend–and should have damped natural […]