EPA Quits the Climate Action Business 

Climate change? Not our fault. Nothing we can do about it anyways. Even if it was. 

That’s the inescapable message from the Trump Administration EPA’s latest assault on US climate policy. 

The specific target this time is the agency’s own 2024 power plant standards, which would have pushed many coal and gas-fired power plants to cut emissions 90% from 2005 levels by 2032. The goal was simple: Encourage plant operators to shift from coal and gas to cleaner sources like wind and solar with battery storage and take a massive chunk out of US emissions along the way.  

How massive? By the agency’s own reckoning, the rules would prevent the equivalent annual emissions of 328 million gas cars, by 2047. The rules were a part of then-President Biden’s commitment to slash US climate pollution at least 61% from 2005 levels by 2035 and a signal to the planet that the world’s largest economy was serious about tackling the climate crisis. 

The fossil fuel boosters in the new White House had other ideas, of course. So it was no surprise when on June 11, the Trump Administration EPA announced it was proposing to repeal the 2024 power plant standards.  But unlike in the first Trump Administration – where EPA replaced more ambitious Obama-era standards with much weaker guidelines – this time, the agency is proposing to abandon power plant climate regulations entirely.  

The move would effectively give power plants a pass to generate as much climate pollution as they want. The rationale is beyond brazen.  

In its announcement, EPA correctly notes correctly that the emissions driving global climate change come from countless global sources. For the international community, this fact has given rise to the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” as enshrined in the Paris Agreement. At the most basic level, this means that all countries have differing levels of responsibility for climate change (and means to act), but all countries do have the responsibility to address it. 

The agency, however, draws the opposite conclusion, claiming that because emissions come from global sources, attributing any resulting health harms specifically to US power sector emissions is simply a mistake.  

Therefore, EPA is “proposing that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution within the meaning of the statue.” 

The statue in question here is the Clean Air Act, which the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 requires EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a contributor to climate change and a threat to the health and well-being of Americans.  

This ruling became the legal basis for the agency’s “endangerment finding” and the foundation for federal policy to limit climate pollution, not just in power plants, but also in transportation and other sectors throughout the economy. 

Per EPA’s new proposal, the Clean Air Act only requires the government to regulate power plant emissions if they contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution. And, because by its own logic, power plants do not contribute significantly, well, the government has no authority to regulate them and all bets are off.  

The “Significantly” Strategy 

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had broadcast something like this was coming in a larger rollback of regulations in March, declaring, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” 

Language choices aside, Zeldin wasn’t wrong in identifying power plant rules – and by extension the Clean Air Act authority they depend on – as the heart of US climate policy. Which makes the argument that because power plants do not contribute significantly to global emissions, they cannot be regulated so dangerous. 

In the US, the power sector is the second-largest source of emissions, producing around 20% of the nation’s climate pollution. Globally, the US sector is responsible for around 2.3% of all emissions.  

On first glance, the number may seem deceptively small. Until you consider the fact that US power plants produce 1.4 billion tons of emissions each year, according to Climate TRACE. Only the entire national economies of China, the US, India, Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia produce more. To put it another way, the US power sector alone is the seventh-biggest climate polluter worldwide. 

If that’s not significant enough to regulate, then nothing is. Which is exactly EPA’s point. 

The Beginning of the End for Federal Climate Action? 

It doesn’t take a whole lot of reading between the lines to see the power plant rule as a test case. Because if EPA can get away with recasting the Clean Air Act and refusing to regulate the nation’s second-largest source of climate pollution, it can refuse to regulate any sector at all. And there’s no reason to think that’s not exactly what it will do.  

Even on its own terms, EPA’s case holds as much water as a bucket with no bottom.  Zeldin’s announcement cites the threat of burdensome rules on a beleaguered power sector, touting repeal as saving the sector an estimated $1.2 billion each year for the next two decades.  

But EPA’s own analysis found these rules would impose only modest costs on the industry – and in some cases none at all. 

 To put these numbers in perspective, the costs of power plant rules Zeldin cites amount to just 0.3% of US investor-owned utility revenues of $411 billion in 2023. In other words, a rounding error.  

Strangely, for an agency whose stated mission is “to protect human health and the environment,” nowhere in the announcement is any consideration of how the existing rule helps protect human health or the environment – or the cost of repeal.  

Initial calculations projected the 2024 rule would deliver an estimated $370 billion in climate and health benefits over the same time period, dwarfing the proposed cost to industry. Far from just dollars, these numbers translate to thousands of premature deaths avoided, hundreds of thousands of asthma symptom cases averted, 57,000 lost work days, and on and on. 

Critically, EPA is also silent on the cost of increasing power sector emissions in contributing to more and more catastrophic and expensive climate events like recent wildfires in Los Angeles (costs estimated at $250 billion) and Hurricane Helene in the Southeast ($79 billion, estimated). 

Taken together, it’s hard to reach any conclusion other than the Trump EPA wants out of regulating climate pollution. No matter the cost. Power plants are just the first step.  

The Timing Matters 

EPA’s proposal comes as surging electricity demand from data centers and other areas are causing US power sector emissions to start rising again. With the technology sector scrambling to find enough electricity to feed these centers, the very real danger is an explosion of new gas plants coming online and coal plants set to retire now continuing operations – all with virtually no restrictions on climate pollution. 

The timing matters too for upcoming talks at the UN’s COP 30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where countries are due to discuss new national climate action plans to rapidly reduce global warming pollution.  

Already, the US has begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement that serves as foundation of these talks, following a January executive order from President Trump. The danger here is that the world’s largest economy publicly absolving itself of any responsibility to limit emissions could give any other country all the political cover they need to follow suit, threatening global climate efforts at a moment when stopping rising temperatures demands maximum ambition from the entire international community.  

What Comes Next 

This is not a done deal. EPA published its proposal in the US Federal Register on June 17 and will take public comments for 45 days. Plus, legal challenges are sure to follow if the final rule looks anything like the current proposal. 

It’s time for Americans to speak up. Join us in demanding EPA do its job to protect human health and the environment by keeping strong power plant standards in place.  

Because the climate crisis is here. And we have a responsibility to act.