The Trump administration announced plans to repeal limits on greenhouse gas emissions and other airborne pollutants from the nation's fossil fuel-fired power plants.
The proposal is part of the Environmental Protection Agency's plan, under the Trump administration, to roll back more than two dozen rules and policies. The proposal is likely to face legal challenges, but if it is finalized in its current form, that would eliminate limits on the second-largest source of climate pollution in the U.S., behind transportation.
The EPA argues pollution from U.S. power plants are a small part of global emissions and they're declining. The agency also claims that eliminating climate pollution from power plants would have little effect on people's health.
The proposed rule reads, "The EPA is further proposing to make a finding that GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution."
In announcing the proposal, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin argued that the Trump administration aims to protect the environment while boosting the economy.
"Rest assured President Trump is the biggest supporter of clean, beautiful coal," Zeldin said from a wood-paneled room at the agency. "EPA is helping pave the way for American energy dominance because energy development underpins economic development, which in turn strengthens national security."
The EPA announcement brought swift criticism from environmental groups.
"These regressive proposals are bad for public health and bad for climate, all to prop up some of the highest polluting power plants in the nation," Shaun Goho, legal director at Clean Air Task Force wrote in a statement.
This proposal would eliminate rules the EPA finalized during the Biden administration that required existing coal and new natural gas-fired power plants to significantly reduce their carbon dioxide pollution, starting in the 2030s. Carbon dioxide from human activity is the main driver of global warming.
The EPA labeled carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses a danger to public health and welfare in 2009. But legal challenges from fossil fuel interests and their allies delayed the finalization of rules to rein in greenhouse gas pollution. Now, the Trump administration also wants to eliminate that 2009 endangerment finding, which could make it easier to roll back other climate regulations.
What Trump's EPA is doing
The Trump administration wants to redirect the federal government away from former President Joe Biden's climate agenda and toward an even deeper embrace of fossil fuels.
"We will drill, baby, drill," Trump said to cheers from supporters at his January inauguration speech. He has started the yearlong process to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed to limit climate pollution and avoid the worst effects of global warming. Trump declared a national energy emergency and placed a moratorium on new wind energy projects on federal land and in federal waters.
Now, the Trump administration argues U.S. power plants are responsible for only about 3% of the global greenhouse gases that are heating the planet. It says that number is declining — it was 5.5% in 2005. So, the administration argues, reducing it further would provide little benefit to public health.
That ignores that the U.S. is responsible for nearly a quarter of the climate pollution in the atmosphere today, which is more than any other nation, historically. When former President Barack Obama announced rules to cut emissions from power plants in 2015, the goal was to encourage other countries to do the same.
But the U.S. coal industry opposed the limits on power plant climate pollution from the start. The industry has pushed back against decades of declining demand. In 1990 52% of the country's electricity was generated by burning coal and by 2023 that was down to 15%.
"We applaud the Trump administration's work to counter the Biden administration's direct assault on coal power," Rich Nolan, National Mining Association president and CEO, wrote in a statement.
The industry has argued that coal-fired power is needed to meet increasing electricity demand, including for the expansion of data centers for the growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, welcomed the proposal, calling it "a major victory for West Virginia, our energy producers, and every American who depends on reliable, affordable electricity."
As that coal-producing state's former attorney general, Morrisey led the effort to overturn climate pollution regulations on power plants over the past decade.
In April Trump signed executive orders to boost the struggling coal industry and power data centers by allowing older coal plants to keep operating, exempting them from federal pollution limits for two years and increasing coal mining on public lands. During his first term Trump tried, and failed, to save individual coal plants as operators switched to more profitable gas-fired power plants.
"The EPA is hoisting the white flag of surrender on the power plant pollution that's poisoning the air we breathe and harming our climate," Manish Bapna, president and CEO of Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in a statement.
The Biden administration's power plant rules aimed to get the country closer to the primary goal in the Paris climate accord — to zero out greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 in order to rein in worsening catastrophes driven by climate change, such as more intense heatwaves, floods and fires. The proposed Trump rules would move the U.S. further away from that goal.
The EPA also proposed to weaken a Biden-era rule that required power plants to limit other pollutants, such as mercury — a neurotoxin that limits brain and nervous system development, especially in infants and children. Coal power plants are the country's largest source of mercury pollution.
"As Trump and his EPA continue to shovel dirty old coal down our throats, they're now adding more toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead and arsenic to the mix," Ryan Maher, environmental health attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in an emailed statement. "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."
Power plant pollution rules delayed for more than a decade
The legal basis for rules to limit climate pollution from power plants started with the Supreme Court's 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision. It concluded that the EPA is required to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. That led to the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding that designated greenhouse gas pollution as a threat to human health.
In 2014 the Obama administration proposed a "Clean Power Plan" aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32%, from 2005 levels, by 2030. That plan faced legal challenges and never went into effect. Still the country met that goal well before 2030, as coal-fired power plants were replaced by natural gas plants that emit less climate pollution and renewable energy.
In 2019 Trump replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with his Affordable Clean Energy rule, which allowed plants to emit more climate pollution.
Then Biden came into office in 2021 with the most ambitious plan to address climate change of any major party candidate in U.S. history. The administration set a goal of eliminating climate pollution from the power sector by 2035. Scientists say that's what's needed to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst effects of climate change. So far, the world's continued fossil fuel use puts it on track to exceed 1.5 Celsius — 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded.
In 2022, the Supreme Court weighed in again and restricted the EPA's options for regulating power plant emissions. Justices said that without a specific law, the agency cannot force the entire power generation industry to move away from fossil fuels toward less-polluting energy sources.
So, instead, the EPA created regulations governing individual power plants. The agency and environmental groups believed that would allow the rules to survive scrutiny from a court dominated by conservative justices.
Instead, the Trump administration is eliminating the regulation altogether. Once the rule is finalized — possibly at the end of this year — it's likely that will also be challenged in court.
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