Trump proposes axing all climate rules for power plants

The Trump administration is moving to ax all climate rules alongside Biden-era and pollution rules for power plants.

The moves come as the Trump administration looks to promote a fossil fueled future — and are expected to worsen global warming and air pollution. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to find that power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated.

In effect, this proposal would overturn Biden-era rules that required existing coal and new gas plants to capture at least 90 percent of their carbon emissions and tighten restrictions on coal plants’ releases of mercury and other toxic metals. 

The climate rule that the Trump administration is proposing to ax would have prevented 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions between the years 2038 and 2047 – emissions equivalent to taking more than 300 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year, according to Biden-era projections.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, in a written statement, accused the previous administration of trying to regulate fossil fuels “out of existence.”

“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,” he said. Together, these rules have been criticized as being designed to regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence.” 

The administration’s moves were criticized by environmental advocates, who said they would both worsen climate change and expose Americans to more air pollution. 

“The Trump EPA is recklessly disregarding its responsibility under our nation’s clean air laws to protect the American people from mercury, arsenic and climate pollution from industrial smokestacks,” Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a written statement. 

The administration appears to be going further than even the first Trump administration on power plants. During Trump’s first tenure, the EPA put forward weakened power plant rules that would be easier to comply with, while now it is proposing to stop regulating planet-warming emissions from the sector entirely.

Updated at 3:37 p.m.