US The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to roll back emission standards for the power plant, the second largest source of CO.2 Domestic emissions, Wednesday, Claim The US electricity sector is “not making a significant contribution” to air pollution.
“The bottom row is that the EPA is trying to get out of the climate change business,” says Ryan Maher, staff lawyer at the Center for Biodiversity.
The announcement will be quietly made a few days after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). release Record-breaking new numbers showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 With recorded history.
At a press conference Tuesday, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who is adjacent to several lawmakers in the country’s top fossil fuel producers, accusing both Obama and Biden administrations of “suffocating our economy to protect the environment.” Zeldin has picked out data centers that will help drive unprecedented demand in the US electricity sector over the next decade. He said the EPA is about “taking action to end the agency’s war against much of the US domestic energy supply.”
The proposed EPA rollback targets a set of rules regarding the power plant sector I’ll introduce it last year By the Biden administration. These regulations required coal and gas-fired power plants to reduce their emissions by 90% by the early 2030s, primarily using carbon capture and storage technologies.
In justification for rollback regulations, the proposed new EPA rules argue that US generation from Fossil fuels does not contribute significantly to GHGS’ global concentrations of GHGS as coal use from other countries continues to grow, as US electricity sector emissions accounted for just 3% of global emissions in 2022, down from 5.5% in 2005. However, power generation In 2022, I was responsible for 25% of US emissions.second only to transport between the dirty sectors of the economy, according to the EPA. NYU analysis has been published Early this month We discovered that if the US power sector is its own independent country, it would become the sixth largest emitter in the world.
“This action would laugh if the stakes weren’t that high,” says Meredith Hankins, a counsel with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The EPA also targets Mercury and Air Toxicity Standards (MATS) rules. This requires that control be maintained to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollutants generated from power plants. The Biden administration in 2024 strengthened these standards. This is until 2011. Despite advances in reducing mercury emissions since the MATS rules were first implemented, coal-fired power plants are still The largest source of mercury emissions In the US.
The administration has also made its intention to revive the coal industry, which has been declining sharply since the rise of cheap natural gas and renewable energy in the 2010s. Pursuing a series of executive orders issued in April, President Trump linked the future of AI domination in the United States to expand into coal.
