Released June 12, 2025 | SUGAR LAND
en
Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday proposed to repeal two major federal rules limiting power plant emissions: one limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), and the other reducing emissions of mercury, acid gases and other hazardous air pollutants.
Wednesday's draft rules were a partial fulfillment of a pledge EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made in March, when he announced plans to reconsider measures enacted by President Donald Trump's two Democratic predecessors. For more on that, see March 14, 2025, article - EPA Will Reconsider 31 Energy and Environmental Rules from Trump's Predecessors. Prior to unveiling plans to revisit those 31 rules, Zeldin said the agency's regulatory streamlining efforts would put a "dagger through the heart of climate-change religion" and "power the Great American Comeback."
The draft rules released Wednesday are expected to be published in the Federal Register in the coming days. They will be open for public comment for 45 days after they are published. The Trump administration has said it wants to finalize the rules by the end of 2025, an aggressive timetable given that prior iterations of those rules took years to develop. Given the contentious history of rulemakings involving these emissions, litigation is a near certainty.
The EPA proposed to repeal the 2015 greenhouse gas emissions standards for new fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Obama-Biden administration, and the 2024 rule for new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Biden-Harris administration. That second rule, commonly known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), directly caused numerous coal-fired power plants to shut down.
"These Biden-era regulations have imposed massive costs on coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants," the agency said, "raising the cost of living for American families, imperiling the reliability of our electric grid, and limiting American energy prosperity."
The EPA estimated repeal of the GHG rule would save the power sector $19 billion in regulatory costs over two decades beginning in 2026, or about $1.2 billion a year. Repealing the 2024 MATS rule would save electricity generators about $1.2 billion in regulatory costs over a decade, or about $120 million a year.
The new MATS rule would lower emissions limits for toxic substances such as lead, nickel and arsenic by 67%, according to an article in The New York Times. Reporters at that news organization were able to obtain a pre-final draft MATS rule. For some coal plants, the proposed rule weakens mercury limits by 70%. It also repeals a requirement that all plants continuously monitor the exhaust coming out of their smokestacks. The EPA did not immediately make available its proposal to repeal the MATS rule.
In its draft GHG rule, EPA asserted that it was not bound by its own 2009 "endangerment" finding on greenhouse gas emissions. The agency argued that because U.S. GHG emissions accounted for only a small portion of global GHG emissions, they did exceed the "significant" threshold and thus were not bound by its own "endangerment" finding.
The draft rule read that since "only extraordinary emissions reductions on a global scale would have any impact on the potential endangerment of public health and welfare in this context, the EPA is proposing to determine that GHG emissions from the (electric generating unit) source category do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution."
The EPA also said this "significant" contribution assessment must be "informed by considerations of national policy regarding the public welfare and the ability of the CAA section 111 regulatory mechanism to achieve meaningful reductions in air pollution that are cost-reasonable and achievable."
The agency's "endangerment" finding on GHG emissions has formed the legal basis for regulating those emissions for over 15 years. The EPA issued that finding in 2009 following a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. E.P.A., which held that if the agency determined that emissions of greenhouse gases threatened the public health and welfare of current and future generations, it was obligated to regulate those emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA's endangerment ruling found that emissions of six gases--CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)--endangered public health. For more on that endangerment finding, see March 11, 2025, article - Will Trump Administration Gut EPA's 2009 Endangerment Finding on CO2?
The draft rules continue a long history of back-and-forth federal efforts to limit power-plant emissions of GHGs, mercury and other air toxics. Several of those efforts eventually made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled against GHG reduction efforts issued by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
Wednesday's proposed rollback of the MATS rule seeks to upend a rule that was finalized more than a decade ago. For more on the Biden administration's efforts to strengthen the GHG rule, see April 26, 2024, article - EPA Issues Rules That Could Reshape Electric Generation. For more on the MATS rule, see February 23, 2023, article - EPA Reaffirms MATS Rule -- Again.
The proposed changes come as the electric power industry works to meet the sharp projected increase in electric demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, semiconductor plants and other advanced manufacturing. Projected surges in electric demand have caused utilities to scramble to extend the lives of baseload power plants, typically fired by coal, or build or refurbish dispatchable power generators that typically burn fossil fuels. For more on that, see February 6, 2025, article - Rising Electric Demand Growth Delays Retirement Dates for Coal-Fired Generation.
Trump has publicly embraced fossil fuels and criticized renewable energy. He has vowed, and acted, to loosen regulations on fossil fuels and rescind federal funding for renewable energy. In a four-part executive order issued April 8, the president took steps to extend the lives of coal-fired generators and coal mines. For more on that, see April 9, 2025, article - Trump Executive Order Seeks to Reverse Decline of Coal. Trump's signature tax and budget bill, now before the U.S. Senate, rescinds billions of dollars of federal support for clean energy, mainly renewable generation and electric vehicles.
Reaction to Wednesday's draft rules was sharply divided, with Republican elected officials and industry groups voicing full-throated support while Democratic officials, environmental organizations and public health officials sharply criticizing the moves.
Notably, two former Republican EPA administrators--William Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman--criticized the Trump EPA rollback efforts. "This administration is endangering all of our lives--ours, our children, our grandchildren," Whitman told The New York Times. She led the EPA under George W. Bush.
In releasing the agency's proposed changes, EPA administrator Zeldin said, "Affordable, reliable electricity is key to the American dream and a natural byproduct of national energy dominance. According to many, the primary purpose of these Biden-Harris administration regulations was to destroy industries that didn't align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry. Together, these rules have been criticized as being designed to regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence."
Alex Bond, executive director for legal & clean air policy at the Edison Electric Institute, said, "Regulatory flexibility and certainty are critical for electric companies as they work to meet the nation's growing demands for reliable electricity, while also keeping customer bills as low as possible."
Bond added that the trade group, which represents the nation's shareholder-owned electric utilities, "appreciates EPA's acknowledgement that carbon capture and storage technologies are not yet viable for widespread deployment. We continue to support the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Electric companies need standards for natural gas facilities that are attainable to plan and permit new facilities, along with flexible regulatory approaches that help maintain dispatchable generation."
Rich Nolan, president and chief executive of the National Mining Association (NMA), said: "We applaud the Trump administration's work to counter the Biden administration's direct assault on coal power and address both the nation's teetering grid reliability and electricity affordability."
"The Biden EPA released a full suite of rules designed to make it impossible for coal plants to continue operations--and did so at a time when this country's soaring electricity needs require every megawatt of coal power that's currently available," Nolan said. "Today's announcement nullifies two of EPA's most consequential air rules, removing deliberately unattainable standards and leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them."
Jim Matheson, chief executive at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, issued a statement thanking the Trump administration for its proposals to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's GHG and MATS rules. "These Biden-era EPA power sector rules are unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable," he said. "And they will jeopardize the reliability of the electric grid for as long as they remain in effect."
The draft rules were a "welcome course correction that will help electric cooperatives reliably meet skyrocketing energy needs and keep the lights on at a cost local families and businesses can afford," Matheson continued. He slammed the existing rules as "textbook examples of a bad energy policy that compounds today's reliability challenges."
That's not the way the EPA proposals were viewed by Democratic elected officials, environmental groups and public health officials.
In a statement, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), the senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said: "By gutting these clean air standards, the EPA is giving a free pass to the nation's dirtiest power plants and most toxic polluters. Pollutants like mercury and greenhouse gases are harmful, a settled scientific fact for decades, and the evidence has only gotten stronger."
Laura Kate Bender, an assistant vice president at the American Lung Association, called the proposed changes "a huge hit" in the fight against climate change and air pollution, according to an article in The New York Times. "Taken together, these rules mean more pollution that could have been prevented for the communities that live around the plants and who are going to be breathing in more harmful emissions that could have been prevented," she said.
A recent analysis from the Associated Press said keeping five existing Clean Air Act rules, including the GHG and MATS rules, could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect. That analysis was based on the EPA's own assessments as well as a wide range of other research.
Speaking about the EPA's proposed rollback of the MATS rule, the AP analysis quoted Cory Zigler, a professor of biostatistics at Brown University who has studied air pollution deaths from coal-fired power plants, as saying "More people will die. More of this type of pollution that we know kills people will be in the air." Mercury is a known carcinogen that can also harm people's brain function, nervous system, kidneys and lungs.
According to the EPA, coal-fired power plant emissions account for about 44% of all U.S. mercury emissions.
An article in The Guardian cited work from New York University that emissions from U.S. fossil fueled generators exceeded the emissions from all sectors of many countries, including Japan, Brazil, Canada and the United Kingdom.
"That seems rather significant to me," Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, told The Guardian. "If this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions, they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that U.S. power plant emissions are significant too."
The Guardian also quoted Joseph Goffman, who led the EPA's office of air and radiation during Biden's term, as saying, "There is absolutely no legal basis for them to propose a pollutant like CO2 has to meet some sort of significance. They are making this up, this is make-believe law. This is a sort of cheat code to try to neutralize any tool they fear might be used to reduce greenhouse gases."
Regarding the proposed revisions to the MATS rule, Mathew Davis, a former EPA official and currently vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental organization, told The New York Times it was a "get out of jail free card" for polluters. "This administration wants to take a wrecking ball to our health protections and they don't care about the health of the future generations whose developing brains are damaged by this highly toxic pollutant," he added.
Britt Burt, Industrial Info Resources' senior vice president of research for the Electric Power industry, made this comment: "When President Trump declared an 'energy emergency' on his first day in office, he laid the foundation for these and other efforts to streamline regulation and establish American energy dominance. Stay tuned to see if these efforts survive legal challenges."
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
Wednesday's draft rules were a partial fulfillment of a pledge EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made in March, when he announced plans to reconsider measures enacted by President Donald Trump's two Democratic predecessors. For more on that, see March 14, 2025, article - EPA Will Reconsider 31 Energy and Environmental Rules from Trump's Predecessors. Prior to unveiling plans to revisit those 31 rules, Zeldin said the agency's regulatory streamlining efforts would put a "dagger through the heart of climate-change religion" and "power the Great American Comeback."
The draft rules released Wednesday are expected to be published in the Federal Register in the coming days. They will be open for public comment for 45 days after they are published. The Trump administration has said it wants to finalize the rules by the end of 2025, an aggressive timetable given that prior iterations of those rules took years to develop. Given the contentious history of rulemakings involving these emissions, litigation is a near certainty.
The EPA proposed to repeal the 2015 greenhouse gas emissions standards for new fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Obama-Biden administration, and the 2024 rule for new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Biden-Harris administration. That second rule, commonly known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), directly caused numerous coal-fired power plants to shut down.
"These Biden-era regulations have imposed massive costs on coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants," the agency said, "raising the cost of living for American families, imperiling the reliability of our electric grid, and limiting American energy prosperity."
The EPA estimated repeal of the GHG rule would save the power sector $19 billion in regulatory costs over two decades beginning in 2026, or about $1.2 billion a year. Repealing the 2024 MATS rule would save electricity generators about $1.2 billion in regulatory costs over a decade, or about $120 million a year.
The new MATS rule would lower emissions limits for toxic substances such as lead, nickel and arsenic by 67%, according to an article in The New York Times. Reporters at that news organization were able to obtain a pre-final draft MATS rule. For some coal plants, the proposed rule weakens mercury limits by 70%. It also repeals a requirement that all plants continuously monitor the exhaust coming out of their smokestacks. The EPA did not immediately make available its proposal to repeal the MATS rule.
In its draft GHG rule, EPA asserted that it was not bound by its own 2009 "endangerment" finding on greenhouse gas emissions. The agency argued that because U.S. GHG emissions accounted for only a small portion of global GHG emissions, they did exceed the "significant" threshold and thus were not bound by its own "endangerment" finding.
The draft rule read that since "only extraordinary emissions reductions on a global scale would have any impact on the potential endangerment of public health and welfare in this context, the EPA is proposing to determine that GHG emissions from the (electric generating unit) source category do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution."
The EPA also said this "significant" contribution assessment must be "informed by considerations of national policy regarding the public welfare and the ability of the CAA section 111 regulatory mechanism to achieve meaningful reductions in air pollution that are cost-reasonable and achievable."
The agency's "endangerment" finding on GHG emissions has formed the legal basis for regulating those emissions for over 15 years. The EPA issued that finding in 2009 following a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. E.P.A., which held that if the agency determined that emissions of greenhouse gases threatened the public health and welfare of current and future generations, it was obligated to regulate those emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA's endangerment ruling found that emissions of six gases--CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)--endangered public health. For more on that endangerment finding, see March 11, 2025, article - Will Trump Administration Gut EPA's 2009 Endangerment Finding on CO2?
The draft rules continue a long history of back-and-forth federal efforts to limit power-plant emissions of GHGs, mercury and other air toxics. Several of those efforts eventually made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled against GHG reduction efforts issued by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
Wednesday's proposed rollback of the MATS rule seeks to upend a rule that was finalized more than a decade ago. For more on the Biden administration's efforts to strengthen the GHG rule, see April 26, 2024, article - EPA Issues Rules That Could Reshape Electric Generation. For more on the MATS rule, see February 23, 2023, article - EPA Reaffirms MATS Rule -- Again.
The proposed changes come as the electric power industry works to meet the sharp projected increase in electric demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, semiconductor plants and other advanced manufacturing. Projected surges in electric demand have caused utilities to scramble to extend the lives of baseload power plants, typically fired by coal, or build or refurbish dispatchable power generators that typically burn fossil fuels. For more on that, see February 6, 2025, article - Rising Electric Demand Growth Delays Retirement Dates for Coal-Fired Generation.
Trump has publicly embraced fossil fuels and criticized renewable energy. He has vowed, and acted, to loosen regulations on fossil fuels and rescind federal funding for renewable energy. In a four-part executive order issued April 8, the president took steps to extend the lives of coal-fired generators and coal mines. For more on that, see April 9, 2025, article - Trump Executive Order Seeks to Reverse Decline of Coal. Trump's signature tax and budget bill, now before the U.S. Senate, rescinds billions of dollars of federal support for clean energy, mainly renewable generation and electric vehicles.
Reaction to Wednesday's draft rules was sharply divided, with Republican elected officials and industry groups voicing full-throated support while Democratic officials, environmental organizations and public health officials sharply criticizing the moves.
Notably, two former Republican EPA administrators--William Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman--criticized the Trump EPA rollback efforts. "This administration is endangering all of our lives--ours, our children, our grandchildren," Whitman told The New York Times. She led the EPA under George W. Bush.
In releasing the agency's proposed changes, EPA administrator Zeldin said, "Affordable, reliable electricity is key to the American dream and a natural byproduct of national energy dominance. According to many, the primary purpose of these Biden-Harris administration regulations was to destroy industries that didn't align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry. Together, these rules have been criticized as being designed to regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence."
Alex Bond, executive director for legal & clean air policy at the Edison Electric Institute, said, "Regulatory flexibility and certainty are critical for electric companies as they work to meet the nation's growing demands for reliable electricity, while also keeping customer bills as low as possible."
Bond added that the trade group, which represents the nation's shareholder-owned electric utilities, "appreciates EPA's acknowledgement that carbon capture and storage technologies are not yet viable for widespread deployment. We continue to support the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Electric companies need standards for natural gas facilities that are attainable to plan and permit new facilities, along with flexible regulatory approaches that help maintain dispatchable generation."
Rich Nolan, president and chief executive of the National Mining Association (NMA), said: "We applaud the Trump administration's work to counter the Biden administration's direct assault on coal power and address both the nation's teetering grid reliability and electricity affordability."
"The Biden EPA released a full suite of rules designed to make it impossible for coal plants to continue operations--and did so at a time when this country's soaring electricity needs require every megawatt of coal power that's currently available," Nolan said. "Today's announcement nullifies two of EPA's most consequential air rules, removing deliberately unattainable standards and leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them."
Jim Matheson, chief executive at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, issued a statement thanking the Trump administration for its proposals to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's GHG and MATS rules. "These Biden-era EPA power sector rules are unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable," he said. "And they will jeopardize the reliability of the electric grid for as long as they remain in effect."
The draft rules were a "welcome course correction that will help electric cooperatives reliably meet skyrocketing energy needs and keep the lights on at a cost local families and businesses can afford," Matheson continued. He slammed the existing rules as "textbook examples of a bad energy policy that compounds today's reliability challenges."
That's not the way the EPA proposals were viewed by Democratic elected officials, environmental groups and public health officials.
In a statement, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), the senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said: "By gutting these clean air standards, the EPA is giving a free pass to the nation's dirtiest power plants and most toxic polluters. Pollutants like mercury and greenhouse gases are harmful, a settled scientific fact for decades, and the evidence has only gotten stronger."
Laura Kate Bender, an assistant vice president at the American Lung Association, called the proposed changes "a huge hit" in the fight against climate change and air pollution, according to an article in The New York Times. "Taken together, these rules mean more pollution that could have been prevented for the communities that live around the plants and who are going to be breathing in more harmful emissions that could have been prevented," she said.
A recent analysis from the Associated Press said keeping five existing Clean Air Act rules, including the GHG and MATS rules, could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect. That analysis was based on the EPA's own assessments as well as a wide range of other research.
Speaking about the EPA's proposed rollback of the MATS rule, the AP analysis quoted Cory Zigler, a professor of biostatistics at Brown University who has studied air pollution deaths from coal-fired power plants, as saying "More people will die. More of this type of pollution that we know kills people will be in the air." Mercury is a known carcinogen that can also harm people's brain function, nervous system, kidneys and lungs.
According to the EPA, coal-fired power plant emissions account for about 44% of all U.S. mercury emissions.
An article in The Guardian cited work from New York University that emissions from U.S. fossil fueled generators exceeded the emissions from all sectors of many countries, including Japan, Brazil, Canada and the United Kingdom.
"That seems rather significant to me," Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, told The Guardian. "If this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions, they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that U.S. power plant emissions are significant too."
The Guardian also quoted Joseph Goffman, who led the EPA's office of air and radiation during Biden's term, as saying, "There is absolutely no legal basis for them to propose a pollutant like CO2 has to meet some sort of significance. They are making this up, this is make-believe law. This is a sort of cheat code to try to neutralize any tool they fear might be used to reduce greenhouse gases."
Regarding the proposed revisions to the MATS rule, Mathew Davis, a former EPA official and currently vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental organization, told The New York Times it was a "get out of jail free card" for polluters. "This administration wants to take a wrecking ball to our health protections and they don't care about the health of the future generations whose developing brains are damaged by this highly toxic pollutant," he added.
Britt Burt, Industrial Info Resources' senior vice president of research for the Electric Power industry, made this comment: "When President Trump declared an 'energy emergency' on his first day in office, he laid the foundation for these and other efforts to streamline regulation and establish American energy dominance. Stay tuned to see if these efforts survive legal challenges."
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
