Trump Proclamation Exempts Nation’s Dirtiest Coal Plants from Mercury & Air Toxics Standards

The exemption will apply to 68 coal plants (148 electric-generating units) spread across 24 states. The most units that have been exempted are in Pennsylvania (16), Kentucky (16), Tennessee (14), Texas (13), and Missouri (13). 

• Cheaper solar and wind energy continues to surge, adding market pressure to the coal industry.
• A quarter of units receiving exemptions are set to retire in the next 5 years, some earlier.
• Cost savings are a tiny fraction of operating costs for the vast majority of units with pollution controls installed already, while the exemptions expose communities to some of the most dangerous air pollution from the energy sector.
• The average age of the exempted units is 47 years old.
• 41 units have announced retirement by 2030.
• The average emissions rate of fine particulate matter across the plants exempted by Trump was 0.007 lbs/MMBtu, according to EPA data. This is below the finalized limit (0.01 lbs/MMBtu) under the revised 2024 MATS standard, from which these power plants just were granted exemptions.
• Six of the nine coal plants that are top 20 polluters of both smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) received exemptions. These include:
  • New Madrid (MO): the largest NOₓ polluter in the U.S. coal fleet.
  • W.A. Parish (TX): the second-largest SO₂ polluter. (A full list of the exempted plants and units is here.)
  • Like almost all the exempted plants, neither New Madrid nor Parish was flagged by the EPA in the 2024 rulemaking as needing new pollution controls to comply with the updated MATS limits, making the administration’s rationale for exemptions especially unjustified.

Burning coal releases dozens of hazardous air pollutants harmful to human health, including mercury, lead, arsenic, nickel, chromium, benzene, dioxins, and acid gases.

• As a result of this waiver, coal-burning power plants cannot shut off their controls outright—they still must comply with the original 2012 MATS rule. However, the exemption applies to the more protective updated rule from 2024. The EPA found the update was needed because technology was available to meet a stronger mercury limit (at plants burning lignite coal); a stronger particulate matter limit (covering toxic metals); and continuous pollution monitors were available, affordable, and far better at monitoring particulate matter emissions.
• Indeed, the EPA found that 93 percent of power plants already had achieved the level of the stronger particulate matter limit in the 2024 rule, through overcompliance with the 2012 rule. The EPA updated the rule for those plants that were not meeting it regularly and required that all plants do so. 

But now the exemption grants affected power plant operators permission to:

• Avoid or delay installing/upgrading pollution controls (like fabric filters for fine particulate matter).
• Scale back the operation and maintenance of existing pollution controls, leading to increased emissions; the vast majority of exempted units that overcomplied with the 2012 pollution limit can stop doing so, whenever they wish, by decreasing operation of installed pollution controls.
• Avoid installing continuous particulate matter monitoring at units lacking such monitors (the vast majority of exempted units), denying communities access to accurate, real-time data about hazardous air pollution. 

In 2024, the EPA projected that most of the exempted plants equipped with pollution-control equipment already would not face meaningful compliance costs under the updated MATS rule.

• Of the nine coal plants that are both top 20 polluters of NOₓ and SO₂ emissions, two-thirds (six plants) were given presidential exemptions. Of those, half (three plants) had no estimated compliance costs, as they already were achieving emission rates below the updated rule’s particulate matter limit.

• Will exempted plants now delay their planned retirements to take advantage of weaker pollution controls?
  • 41 units at 19 plants had been announced to retire—in part or in full—or to stop burning coal by 2029 under legal consent decrees, or as part of state utility Integrated Resource Planning.
• Will exempted plant operators scale back their use of existing pollution controls, increasing toxic emissions with little or no public oversight (since continuous monitors are delayed, too)?
• Why were so many of the exemptions granted to plants and units that already had achieved the safer pollution limits with their existing controls?
• How can power plant owners and operators expect the public to believe that technology is “not available” (a legal condition of the exemptions under the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7412(i)(4)), when that technology already is installed at power plants, being used to achieve the safer limit, and being paid for by electricity customers (in states with regulated utilities)?
• Did the owners or operators of exempted power plants with installed pollution controls ask the EPA and the White House for exemptions and claim that technology was “not available”? Will those companies come public with the requests?
• What role did political influence play in selecting which plants received exemptions?