EPA Repeals Climate Rules for Power Plants

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency repealed critical standards for power plant carbon pollution, the largest industrial source of those emissions with more than 1.5 billion tons emitted each year.

NRDC and its allies plan to take the Trump Administration to court to prevent this repeal. The EPA’s legal reasoning is fatally flawed, according to NRDC experts.

In 2024 the EPA estimated that the standards the agency is repealing today would deliver a net $370 billion in climate and health benefits – a stunning 20 times that of the costs to industry. A recent NRDC analysis found that Trump’s policies will destroy $700 billion in new power sector investments over the next decade, raise consumer bills by more than $30 billion a year by 2035, and reduce by half the power sector carbon reductions likely before its policies took effect.

The following is a statement from Manish Bapna, president of NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):  

“Instead of fighting for a safer, healthier future for our children and grandchildren, the Trump EPA is desperately trying to keep the expensive status quo that favors polluters over public health and safety. That’s not what is best for our nation, that’s not what the law requires, and that’s not what people are demanding.” 

“This cannot stand. Ignoring the immense harm to the public from this pollution is a clear violation of the Clean Air Act and of Supreme Court precedent. We will see them in court.

“The administration is not just abdicating its legal and moral responsibility to tackle climate change—but more broadly its responsibility to public safety, as we all reckoned with the hottest summer in history and a wave of unnatural, climate-spawned disasters. The world seeks leadership on climate change, instead the Trump administration delivers more cover for their benefactors in the fossil fuels industry by cutting the biggest polluters loose to do more damage than ever. And they are doing it using the most convoluted and contorted economic reasoning that only counts costs for industry while ignoring the increasingly necessary benefits of actually protecting the public.

“The Trump administration has already done much to force skyrocketing household electricity bills and undercut new investments in the cheap, clean power needed now more than ever. Whatever your thoughts are on climate change, this is the latest in short-sighted Trump Administration energy policies that are likely to raise consumer bills by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.”

Background:

The EPA today is both finalizing a repeal of the standards based on the technical record and proposing a more far-reaching assault on the very core of the idea that the federal government has the duty to address the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. These actions are part of this administration’s broad attack on reasonable actions to tackle climate change, including its outrageous decision to abandon the endangerment finding for vehicles earlier this year.

The Clean Air Act obligates EPA to issue standards to reduce emissions from sources such as power plants that significantly contribute to dangerous air pollution. Repealing these standards without a replacement is an abdication of EPA’s legal responsibility to protect public health. If the U.S. power sector were a nation, it would rank sixth in the world in terms of emissions, after China, the U.S., India, and Russia. Power plants are the second largest source of emissions in the country after transportation, and the largest industrial source of emissions. 

The carbon standards for power plants were finalized in April of 2024 and require carbon pollution reductions from existing coal and new gas-fired power plants, which are responsible for almost one-third of the nation’s carbon emissions. Those standards were based on pollution controls that could be implemented at the plant, making them consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA.

According to the EPA’s 2024 analysis, the EPA standards would reduce soot, smog, and mercury pollution that cause asthma, heart attacks, lung disease, and premature death. They would prevent thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks. An outside analysis found these standards are a crucial “backstop” to ensure that the power sector achieves emissions reductions possible because of economic competitiveness of wind, solar and battery technologies. 

NRDC is tracking every step of the Trump administration's attacks on public health and the environment. Go to White House Watch for the comprehensive list of these attacks. To subscribe to our weekly newsletter, email jbar@nrdc.org. 

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).