The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to repeal the rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and natural gas-fired power plants — and to go a step further by trying to strip away the legal basis future administrations would need to regulate those emissions at all, as The Associated Press’s Matthew Daly reports.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to unveil the final rule before the G20 ministerial meeting on “energy abundance” in Houston that he’s co-hosting with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Zeldin has argued the Biden-era rule was designed to “suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment” and to regulate coal “out of existence,” part of what he’s called a “war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.”
The move goes beyond a simple repeal. The EPA is also arguing that greenhouse gases “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution,” an assertion aimed at undercutting the legal finding that has underpinned federal climate regulation of power plants for more than a decade — effectively trying to block future administrations from reviving similar limits.
Power plants burning coal, gas and oil account for roughly a quarter of total U.S. climate pollution, second only to transportation. EPA’s own prior assessments estimated the rules it’s now unwinding could prevent about 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion annually. Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said “tearing down our national protections against climate pollution from power plants will have enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families.”
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The repeal is one of nearly three dozen environmental rules Zeldin targeted for rollback and follows Trump’s second withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. Legal challenges are expected as soon as the rule is finalized.
