Key facts
- The EPA has removed limits on emissions from US power plants.
- The EPA claimed the rollback will cut Americans' electricity bills.
- The EPA stated that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants have no material impact on global climate change.
- The EPA's own analysis indicates retail electricity prices will be 0.7% higher in 2030 due to the rule change.
- The EPA has reduced the dollar value of averting a human death to zero in its cost-benefit analysis.
- The Trump administration's scrapping of pollution limits will unleash an extra 406 million metric tons of pollution by 2035.
The Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has eliminated limits on pollution from US power plants, a move that critics argue is based on flawed reasoning and will have negative consequences. The agency claimed this rollback will lower electricity bills and that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants have no material impact on global climate change.
However, the EPA's own analysis, published with the new rule, suggests that retail electricity prices will actually be 0.7% higher in 2030 as a result of the change, with prices not expected to drop until the mid-2030s. The cost of running coal-fired power plants, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is projected to escalate.
Meredith Hankins, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), stated that Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, is "dead wrong" about electricity bill cuts. She argued that any future bill reductions would be due to the natural retirement of expensive coal plants, not the new rule. Hankins added that the administration is propping up polluting energy sources while removing incentives for cleaner ones.
The EPA stated the reversal of Joe Biden-era carbon pollution standards will save $310 billion in compliance costs for the power sector, but did not explain how these savings would be passed on to households or detail the impact of increased carbon dioxide emissions. Critics argue the revised rule ignores the public health and economic benefits of reducing fossil fuel emissions, effectively valuing the avoidance of a human death at zero.
Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, criticized the rule's mathematics and the EPA's failure to count the costs to Americans' health and livelihoods. Bryan Hubbell, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, noted that previous regulations addressed health effects from emissions, particularly in vulnerable populations, and that these harms are now likely to increase.
The EPA's assertion that power plant emissions have no material impact on climate change is directly contradicted by scientific consensus. Scientists emphasize that every fraction of temperature increase is crucial in determining the severity of climate-related disasters. The US has recently experienced its hottest summer on record, and the world its joint hottest month in August.
The scrapping of pollution limits is projected to release an additional 406 million metric tons of pollution by 2035, more than the annual carbon emissions of the entire UK. By 2040, this figure is expected to rise to 533 million tons, comparable to Germany's pollution.
Green groups, including the NRDC, plan to challenge the reversed regulations in court. Experts suggest these actions delay the necessary transition to cleaner, cheaper energy sources like solar and wind, which are now the cheapest forms of new power, according to Matthew Roling, a climate policy expert at Northwestern University. He described the deregulation as a subsidy for oil and gas companies, paid for by consumers through higher energy bills and poorer air quality.