EPA repeals climate rules for power plants
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas and announced it is taking a separate but related step to prevent future administrations from regulating climate pollution from power plants.
The rule change, first proposed last year, represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap the sun’s heat.
Environmental groups decried the change, saying it would come at a cost to Americans’ health and further degrade the environment.
Revoking the Biden-era power plant rule would save industry more than $300 billion in costs and help “unleash” American energy, the EPA said. The change will allow utilities to “make the best decision for the ratepayers based on cost and cost savings, instead of being required to shut down facilities,” said EPA Assistant Administrator Aaron Szabo.
The power plant rule, to take effect soon after publication in the Federal Register, is expected to face immediate legal challenges.
Environmental groups also are likely to challenge the separate rule proposed Monday that could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The proposal, expected to be made final next year, follows on EPA’s action earlier this year revoking a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
The February action eliminated all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks. The new plan would apply similar logic to a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants.
The announcements came as EPA chief Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright host a G20 ministerial meeting on “energy abundance” in Houston. The announcement of the rule, coming on the same day, is both a nod to the important role oil-rich Texas plays in the energy industry and a potential snub of European and other international allies in attendance who have pursued environmentally friendly policies that the Trump administration has moved to undo.
Republican President Donald Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at a speech to the United Nations last year, and his administration withdrew the U.S. -- for the second time -- from the 2015 Paris climate accord that sets voluntary goals to curb planet-warming emissions.
Trump has boasted of U.S. energy abundance even as the Iran war continues to disrupt global fuel markets and gas prices top $4.31 a gallon, up more than a dollar from a year ago.
The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Trump’s repeated pledge to ” unleash American energy ” and make it easier for utilities to supply electricity for homes and businesses.
Former Vice President Al Gore said the EPA’s action moves the United States “in the exact opposite direction of the rest of the world. With ongoing disruption in global energy markets, the clear answer to rising costs and energy security is clean energy.”
Even as the Trump administration “is dragging the U.S. backwards,” the transition to clean energy “will continue to take hold … both in the U.S. and globally,” Gore said Monday in a email to The Associated Press. “That’s because clean energy is cheaper, creates more jobs and bolsters energy security.”