The Trump administration is rescinding climate controls on coal and gas-fired power plants, one of its most aggressive moves so far to unwind U.S. environmental regulations. Under the final rule announced Monday afternoon at the G20 summit for energy ministers in Houston, the Environmental Protection Agency is ending a Biden-era mandate requiring existing and future fossil-fuel-fired power plants to dramatically curb their emissions in the coming decades through the use of specific technologies, including carbon capture and storage. The agency estimates the final rule will save $310 billion, making it the “largest power sector deregulatory action ever,” said Administrator Lee Zeldin in Houston.
The decision will effectively end the federal effort to regulate the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases in the U.S. If America’s power sector were a country, it would rank as the world’s sixth-largest emitter, according to an analysis of 2022 emissions data by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. There are multiple pending lawsuits against these other climate rollbacks, and environmental experts anticipate the new power plant rule will likely be challenged immediately in court, too.
Agency officials on Monday also proposed a new rule repealing the federal finding that greenhouse gases from power plants specifically are a significant source of air pollution, effectively a separate endangerment finding for power plants under the Clean Air Act. In its new proposal, the takes the position that regulating climate emissions from power plants is beyond its authority under the Clean Air Act, according to Szabo. Under the Obama administration, the created new standards — the Clean Power Plan — that required existing and future fossil-fuel-fired plants to cut their climate pollution.
Industry groups for the power sector and some states sued over the rule and the courts put it on hold before it took effect. Ultimately, the Supreme Court struck it down in 2022. Former President Joe Biden’s then finalized rules in 2024 that essentially forced the nation’s current fleet of coal plants to capture most carbon emissions by 2039 or close.
They also put strict emissions limits on current and future gas plants. These are the mandates now being repealed. Various members of the power sector lobbied for the change, claiming the Biden-era standards were unrealistic.
The elimination of the mandates comes as the Trump administration is taking unprecedented steps to keep coal-fired power plants online, including ordering some plants not to retire as planned, in response to growing electricity demand from data centers and domestic manufacturing. Industry groups celebrated the rollback. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents all U.S. investor-owned electric companies, “welcomes EPA’s repeal of carbon capture and storage-based standards,” said the trade group’s chief legal officer Rachael Marsh.
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