WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to eliminate regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that fuel coal and natural gas, part of a broad rollback of environmental regulations that manager Lee Zeldin said would remove trillions of dollars in costs and “Els” American energy.
The EPA also plans to undermine regulations requiring power plants to reduce the emission of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm the brain development of young children and contribute to adult heart attacks and other health issues.
The planned rollback, scheduled to be announced Wednesday, aims to make President Donald Trump’s repeated pledge to “unleash American energy” and make it more affordable for Americans to move homes and run businesses.
If approved and ultimately made, the plan reverses the Joe Biden administration’s efforts to address and improve conditions in areas that are heavily burdened by industrial pollution, primarily in low-income and majority black or Hispanic communities.
The power plant rules are one of around 30 environmental regulations targeted at the target when Zeldin announced what he called “the most consequential deregulation day in American history” in March. He said the action would “place the dagger through the heart of climate change religion and introduce a “golden age” into the American economy.
The Environmental Group vowed to challenge the rules in court.
“Power plants are one of the nation’s largest sources of dangerous pollution. We have the latest technology to enable these plants to reduce pollution with available and cost-effective solutions,” said Vicki Patton, the advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund.
The EPA’s target of clean air standards under Republican Trump “we protect people all over America today and protect future generations,” Patton said.
“Ignoring the major harm to public health caused by pollution of power plants is a clear violation of the law,” added Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Council on Natural Resources Defense. “Our lawyers will monitor closely. If the EPA finalizes slapdash efforts to repeal these rules, we will see them in court.”
Rules targeting the EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save an effective $275 billion.
It is never guaranteed that the rules will be completely eliminated. It cannot be changed unless it goes through a federal rulemaking process that takes years and requires public comment and scientific justification.
Even partially dismantling the rules means more contaminants such as smog, mercury and lead, smaller airborne particles that can stay in the lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It also means that we emit a high amount of greenhouse gases that drive global warming to more deadly levels.
Biden, a Democrat, has characterized the presidency by combat climate change. Coal-fired power plants will be forced to acquire or close chimney emissions under strict EPA regulations issued last year. At the time, Eppa principal Michael Regan said the power plant rules (the most ambitious effort by the Biden administration to curb pollution that warms the planet from the electricity sector) would support reliable, long-term power supply while reducing pollution and improving public health.
The electricity sector is the country’s second largest contributor to post-transport climate change.
The Trump EPA argues in its proposed regulations that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change and therefore do not meet thresholds under the Clean Air Act for regulatory measures.
A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found that Biden-era regulations could reduce carbon emissions in the US electricity sector by 2040 by 73% down from 2005 levels, 86%.
“Our research shows that EPA’s power plant regulations have made considerable progress in protecting human health and the environment,” said Aaron Bergman, a fellow in Future Resources, who is a non-profit research institute and co-author of the scientific paper.
“Carbon emissions in the electricity sector drop faster than they would have been if the rules were not in place (in the Biden era),” Bergman said in an email. “We’ve also seen a significant reduction in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, and pollutants that are harmful to human health.”
