Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it will no longer regulate planet-warming pollution from power plants that burn coal or natural gas. The nation’s top environmental authority is rolling back most Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to remove “red tape” that drives up energy costs, agency officials said. They also announced a proposal to rescind regulations on the power sector from the Obama era, and prevent future administrations from implementing new ones.
Making electricity from coal and gas is the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and the leading driver of climate change globally. California does not have any coal-fired power plants and has its own regulations on natural gas. The rollback could result in as much as 5.8 billion metric tons of added carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, according to Zealan Hoover, a former senior advisor to the administrator in the Biden administration.
While electricity demand is rising, “we do not have to meet that electricity demand by highly polluting coal and gas plants,” Hoover said. This administration is choosing to cut those standards.” The Biden administration’s rules would have required some coal plants to make major cuts in their emissions, in some cases by installing carbon-capture technology, changing how they operate or eventually retiring. They would also have required future natural gas plants to meet strict emissions standards, which they could achieve by converting to cleaner-burning fuels like hydrogen. officials now say the technology is not sufficiently available.
Besides the climate disturbance, which effects everyone, Monday’s rollback will most directly affect people who live near coal plants, which California has already phased out, and people who live near gas plants in states that don’t have their own regulations. California requires 90% of electricity to be zero-carbon by 2035 and 100% to be so by 2045. That would eliminate natural gas in the power sector.
California Air Resources Board spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said the Trump administration’s decision “has no effect on California’s rules and greenhouse gases from the state’s power plants are still regulated under Cap-and-Invest.” The latter regulation is the state’s backstop climate trading program that puts an ever-stricter cap on emissions across sectors and allows polluting businesses to buy and trade allowances to meet it. Californians will still feel the effects of Monday’s decisions. They argued that the 2024 rules established by the Biden administration — which set stringent standards for fossil fuel plants — were a “direct attempt to shift America away from affordable energy” in violation of the Clean Air Act.
In all, they said the action will save $310 billion for the power sector, primarily by avoiding costs to comply with the stricter rules and other forced investments. But Hoover, the former Biden administration advisor, said those calculations omit how much the country would have saved in avoided health care costs. Increased pollution from coal and gas plants will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in negative health impacts from asthma, heart and lung disease and premature deaths, among other outcomes, he said.
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