EPA scraps Biden-era greenhouse gas rules for power plants

Agency projects $310 billion in savings from rollback

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it is scrapping Biden-era rules limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from coal and gas power plants, with the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, saying the rollback would save $310 billion and lower energy prices.

“The reality is that America produces energy better and cleaner than anywhere else in the world, and our power plants should not be unfairly targeted,” Zeldin said.

In a written statement, the EPA said it had found the Biden-era regulations — which targeted power plants, vehicles and industrial facilities — exceeded its statutory authority by requiring control technologies that are not adequately demonstrated, effectively forcing plants to retire rather than setting standards they could actually meet. The agency said it would also move to repeal all other greenhouse-gas rules for the power sector.

The changes were proposed last year by Zeldin, who said they would “ensure affordable and reliable energy supplies and drive down the costs of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing while boosting our national security.”

The Biden-era rules had called for major reductions in carbon emissions from power plants, and were predicted to prevent 4,500 premature deaths annually, according to an estimate cited by BBC News. The EPA, in announcing Monday’s decision, said “any potential public health harms are too uncertain, conjectural, remote, and convoluted to tie specifically to the US power sector.”

Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an independent environmental organization, called the rollback “a giant step backward.” Keohane said the EPA “ignored sound science and economics and abdicated its responsibility to protect public health and welfare.”

Fossil fuels are by far the largest driver of global climate change, according to the United Nations. The United States is the second-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, behind China. The power sector accounts for roughly a quarter of US emissions, at about 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent each year, according to the latest available estimates. The figure puts US power-sector emissions above the total emissions of all but a handful of countries.

US power-sector emissions have generally fallen over the past two decades as coal use has declined, with a slight uptick last year. President Donald Trump has long argued for a resurgence in coal power and has regularly criticized renewables such as wind and solar. Some researchers have questioned whether coal will return at the scale Trump envisions, pointing to the sharp fall in the cost of solar power and other clean technologies over the past decade.

The precise consequences of Monday’s announcement for US emissions — and global climate change — are uncertain. Previous modeling by the independent Rhodium Group suggested that rolling back US climate regulations would slow — but not reverse — emissions cuts in the United States.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of 19 states and several of the nation’s largest coal companies, which had argued the EPA did not have authority to limit greenhouse-gas emissions across whole states. The ruling narrowed the agency’s regulatory reach.

Monday’s announcement is the latest in a series of Trump-administration moves to walk back climate policy. In February, the EPA reversed a landmark Obama-era scientific ruling, which held that greenhouse gases were a threat to public health. That reversal was challenged by several states and local governments.