Trump’s EPA set to end regulations on how much pollution coal plants can produce

Trump’s EPA set to end regulations on how much pollution coal plants can produce The administration is moving to prevent any attempt to reimpose any limits on emissions under future presidents - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce Monday that the United States will stop limiting the greenhouse gases released by coal- and gas-fired power plants, completing the Trump administration's dismantling of the climate policies of the two previous Democratic presidents. The New York Times reported the plan Sunday, citing two people familiar with the proposal who spoke on condition of anonymity because it had not been made public. The repeal itself is only half of what the agency intends to do. According to the Times, the EPA will argue that greenhouse gases from power plants do not endanger human health or the environment, and that it therefore has no authority to regulate them under the Clean Air Act at all. If that argument survives in court, it would not simply end the current rules. It would remove the legal basis on which any future administration could write new ones. "They are swinging from the fences to try to prevent any administration from regulating one of the largest sources of emission for the United States," Carrie Jenks, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, told the paper. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to make the announcement in Houston at a meeting of Group of 20 energy ministers, an event the administration has branded the Energy Abundance Ministerial. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are also expected to appear. Electricity generation is the second-largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States, behind transportationThe American power sector would rank as the fifth-largest climate polluter in the world, behind China, the United States as a whole, India and Russia, if it were a country. The rules being rescinded were finalised by the Biden administration in 2024 and applied to coal plants already operating and to gas plants that had yet to be built. Compliance would have required coal plants to capture their carbon emissions and store them underground, or gas plants to burn cleaner fuels such as hydrogen. The coal industry argued the technology was unworkable at the cost, and warned that plants would close rather than retrofit. The Biden administration projected that the rule would deliver $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047, largely by cutting soot and other pollutants alongside carbon. It estimated that in 2035 alone the standards would prevent as many as 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 360,000 asthma attacks, 48,000 missed school days and 57,000 lost workdays. Those figures will not appear in the agency's accounting of what repeal costs. Under Trump, the EPA has stopped estimating the public health benefits of reducing pollution in the cost-benefit analyses required for clean-air rules, and now calculates only what compliance costs businesses. "This is another nail in the coffin for this administration's commitment to protecting people and tackling the climate crisis," Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times. The agency, he said, "is ending its legal and moral responsibility to end climate pollution." Power plants would remain subject to limits on mercury, arsenic and other contaminants, though the EPA has already loosened how much mercury they may emit. Monday's action is the latest in a year of aggressive moves by the Trump administration to reverse decades of environmental protections and make it far more difficult for future presidents to do anything that could undermine the fossil fuel industry. The EPA has already eliminated greenhouse gas standards for car tailpipes and eased restrictions on the planet-warming chemicals used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Most significantly, it moved against the Obama-era endangerment finding — the scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health, and the foundation of the agency's authority to regulate them at all. Trump has for years called climate change a "hoax” and has suggested the entire movement to combat climate change is part of a China-orchestrated operation to undermine the U.S. economy. During his second term, his administration has framed the rollbacks as a response to electricity demand, particularly from the data centers built to run artificial intelligence systems, and has sought to make fossil fuels cheaper and faster to burn. Despite Trump’s push to revive fossil fuels and cripple renewables, the energy market hasn’t followed his preferences. While coal generated more than half of American electricity in 1990k, it has fallen to roughly 17 percent last year. Since 2010, 330 coal plants have retired and another 60 have announced closures by 2031, according to the Sierra Club. New coal plants are more expensive to build and run than gas or renewables. Utilities are building gas instead — more than two dozen new gas plants came online in the United States last year, according to the energy data firm Cleanview. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments