Trump EPA repeals coal, gas power plant pollution limits

What happened

The Environmental Protection Agency Monday said it had finalized a repeal of rules limiting planet-warming pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. The EPA also proposed a related measure that would prevent future administrations from regulating emissions from fossil-fuel power plants, the second-largest U.S. source of greenhouse gas emissions after transportation.

Who said what

The EPA’s “two-pronged approach to abolishing the greenhouse gas limits” completes the Trump administration’s “erasure of the most consequential climate policies” of the Biden and Obama administrations, The New York Times said. Along with scrapping Biden’s 2024 rule requiring the industry to slash emissions by the late 2030s, the EPA “argued that greenhouse gases from power plants do not endanger human health or the environment,” so it can’t legally regulate them under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA said the repeal would save $310 billion and “unleash” America’s energy potential. “Large solar and wind projects, however, provide more cost-competitive energy than natural gas and coal,” NPR said, citing financial services firm Lazard. And along with “driving Earth’s warming to deadlier levels,” the “rules targeted by Trump’s EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year,” The Associated Press said, citing its analysis of EPA data and other research.

What next?

The rollback of Biden’s emissions limits will “take effect soon after publication in the Federal Register,” the AP said. Both it and the companion measure to “scuttle EPA’s legal basis for regulating power plant carbon emissions” are “certain to be challenged in court,” Politico said. But “if upheld, the rules will represent a final nail in the coffin for most federal climate regulation.”

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