EPA moves to roll back emissions rules for fossil‑fuel power plants

The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved to lift all rules putting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas–fueled power plants, a move that climate scientists and activists say will harm public health and contribute to climate change. The rules required fossil fuel–based power plants to capture 90 percent of their greenhouse gas emissions.

The change was first proposed more than a year ago as part of sweeping deregulation that the EPA said will save $310 billion. Climate scientists and the EPA under the Biden administration said that regulating the emissions would save tens of billions of dollars in terms of public health.

"For over 15 years, the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy. The Trump Administration has come in to protect American energy and to make sure you can afford to keep the lights on,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a statement. “Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices, but this is just the beginning. We are working to go even further so that American energy can be fully unleashed. Realizing the full potential of American energy means more jobs, lower prices, and a more prosperous America.”

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Though Zeldin acknowledged in his Senate confirmation hearing that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat and lead to global climate change, much of his focus at the agency has been oriented towards eliminating emissions standards, including reversing a rule called the “endangerment finding” in February. The rule was based on a 2009 agency report declaring, based on longstanding scientific evidence, that six greenhouse gases threatened the health and welfare of Americans because of the threat they posed to the climate. It followed a Supreme Court decision two years earlier that allowed the EPA to set limits on greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

“Everything Lee Zeldin is doing is contrary to the science,” says Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Lifting the regulations on fossil-fuel power plants has long been expected, Cleetus says. The president has claimed that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by China, and members of the administration have dismissed scientific evidence of its harmful effects as alarmism.

“I know the administration has in the past made fallacious arguments, faulty arguments about the significance, but these are very significant contributors to global heat-trapping emissions,” says Cleetus, noting that the United Nations recently said surpassing the 1.5-degree-Celsius global warming target set in the Paris Agreement, which Trump withdrew the U.S. from in January, is now inevitable. “That is a very sobering scientific context for this announcement.”

According to the EPA’s website, power plants are the largest stationary source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Though the amount emitted by power plants had been steadily declining since 2011, they still accounted for more than 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and other emissions in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. Transportation is the top source of all U.S. emissions, accounting for more than a quarter of them. After revoking the endangerment finding, the Trump administration had already repealed previous regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel-efficiency standards set during the Biden administration.

Rescinding the transportation and power plant regulations as well as the endangerment finding could also make it more difficult for future administrations to issue regulations without specific new laws or amendments to the Clean Air Act by Congress.

“With millions of Americans facing wildfires, heat waves and deadly storms fueled by climate change, the Trump administration is cutting the biggest polluters loose to do more damage than ever,” said Natural Resources Defense Council federal climate legal director Meredith Hankins in a statement on Monday. “For the health of our families and good of our nation, this cannot stand. Ignoring the immense harm to the public from this power plant pollution is a clear violation of the Clean Air Act and of Supreme Court precedent. We will be seeing them in court."