EPA proposes repeal of clean air rules for power plants

The US administration under president Trump proposes to repeal decades of climate change legislation. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on 11 June the agency’s plan to repeal two landmark power plant emission regulations.

The EPA is proposing the repeal of the 2015 and 2024 emissions standards for new and existing fossil-fuel powered plants, including rules that govern CO₂, mercury and air toxins emissions.

During a press conference Lee Zeldin called it “a historic day at the EPA” and said the agency’s actions were designed to “both protect the environment and grow the economy.”

“We are proposing to repeal Obama and Biden rules that have been criticised as regulating coal, oil and gas out of existence – from the so-called Clean Power Plan to the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS,” said Zeldin. “Together, if finalised, these actions would result in saving over a billion dollars per year,” he said.

The first of these two rules focuses on carbon emissions, requiring existing coal-fired and new natural gas plants to cut 90% of their carbon pollution using technologies like carbon capture. The second rule strengthened the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), tightening by 67% the limits on toxic metals such as mercury from coal-fired power plants and requiring a 70% reduction in the mercury emissions standard specifically from lignite coal-fired power plants. Both rules were part of a broader EPA effort finalised in April 2024 to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired plants.

Zeldin said the EPA will decide if fossil fuel power plants are significant contributors of greenhouse gas emissions and if those emissions are dangerous to public health or the environment, key determinations for rolling back the regulations under the Clean Air Act. Existing coal-fired power plants are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, according to the EPA, and new natural gas-fired combustion turbines are some of the largest new sources of these emissions being built today.

Zeldin said he is not prejudging a decision on the environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel power plants and that the repeal is still a proposal and yet to be finalised. The public will have an opportunity to comment on the changes.

“We’re not eliminating MATS. We’re proposing to revise it to remove the gratuitous requirements added by the Biden administration in 2024,” said Zeldin. He added that “If finalised, no power plant will be allowed to emit more than they do today or as much as they did one or two years ago.”

Opposition mounts

Opposition to the proposals mounted quickly, and its language quickly became blunt and uncompromising. Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator and White House national climate advisor during the Biden administration, wrote “The key rationale Zeldin is using to justify the dismantling of our nation’s protections from power plant pollution is absolutely illogical and indefensible.”

She added, “It’s a purely political play that goes against decades of science and policy review. By giving a green light to more pollution, his legacy will forever be someone who does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health.”

An administration regulatory impact analysis conducted during the Biden Administration found that by 2047, the new standards would avoid 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution, the equivalent of 328 million gas-powered cars’ annual emissions. The Sierra Club estimates that the proposed changes would allow some power plants to release nearly seven times as much CO₂ as they currently put into the atmosphere.

Some environmental organisations told ABC News that they plan to sue the administration to stop any rollbacks of the pollution standards.

In a statement to the broadcaster, Ryan Maher, an environmental health attorney at the Centre for Biological Diversity said, “They had to fire hundreds of scientists to advance these destructive policies because they know the facts are indisputable. If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to stand they’ll only fan the flames of extreme heat and wildfires, and they’ll trigger more child deaths, more cancers, more lung diseases and more heart attacks.”

The Sierra Club’s climate policy director, Patrick Drupp, wrote in a statement to ABC News, “It’s completely reprehensible that Donald Trump would seek to roll back these lifesaving standards and do more harm to the American people and our planet just to earn some brownie points with the fossil fuel industry. This repeal means more climate disasters, more heart attacks, more asthma attacks, more birth defects, more premature deaths.”

“In repealing the carbon standards, Administrator Zeldin is flagrantly disregarding incontrovertible evidence and long-standing precedent, intentionally sidelining EPA from the climate fight and letting fossil fuel companies freely pollute,” Julie McNamara, associate director of policy for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a statement to ABC News. This repeal would condemn people across the country and around the world to a future of worsening climate impacts and devastating costs.”

The EPA says the changes would lower electricity costs for consumers and increase the supply of energy. In response to opposition from environmental groups, an EPA spokesperson said, “many of those same groups were ecstatic when the Obama administration implemented the 2012 MATS rule.”

“Unlike the previous administration that tried to ram through regulations to destroy industries that didn’t align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry, the Trump EPA is committed to EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment”.