This past Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized the repeal of rules, established during the prior administration of President Joe Biden that limited greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants. The repeal eliminates virtually all the greenhouse gas standards established in April 2024 under the Clean Air Act. EPA Administration Lee Zeldin even went so far as to conclude that EPA should not even be regulating greenhouse gases caused by the electricity sector at all, under the theory that the Clean Air Act’s Section 111 does not grant the authority to regulate power plants for justifications relating to climate change. Such a finding would not only do an about-face on the EPA’s growing attention to combating the effects of climate change over recent decades but also make it significantly more difficult for future administrations to reinstate the April 2024 standard.
Referencing the Trump EPA’s Proposed Rule Change from June of 2025, the EPA explicitly concluded that greenhouse gas “emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution,” despite the fact that the EPA has previously concluded that power plants have been found to be the second-largest source of temperature increasing carbon dioxide in the US (following transportation).
Biden-era rules required existing coal and new natural-gas power plants to cut carbon pollution by 90 percent using developing technologies like carbon capture and energy storage. Accordingly, Zeldin boasted that this move is the largest deregulatory action of the U.S. power sector in history, and that such extensive deregulation will cut red tape, resulting in trillions of dollars of savings for “companies that chose to invest in America.” Zeldin added he believes the move will have positive practical price drops for Americans frustrated by ever-increasing electricity bills.
On the other side, environmentalists and Biden administration alums objected to the drastic change, noting that it was occurring while the dangers of rapid climate change are becoming apparent daily, and that this private-sector activism has unnaturally halted recent “market-driven trends” toward lower-carbon technologies and will immediately lead to increased pollution. Any supposed “cost” savings, environmentalists argue, would come at the cost of Americans’ health and the environment. A former Biden EPA official said that “Instead of ‘Making America Healthy Again,’ Trump is telling the biggest fossil fuel companies that they can make Americans sicker just to add to their bottom lines.”
The new power plant rule is expected to take effect right after its publication in the Federal Register. As for the objectors’ next steps? “We will be seeing them in court,” one environmental organization executive promised.