EPA Claims $310 Billion in Savings from Power Plant Rule Repeal as Senate GOP Scrambles on Electricity Costs

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule this month repealing the Biden administration's 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the move will save Americans $310 billion by restoring cheaper baseload power, according to an op-ed carried by The Hill and syndicated by Yahoo News. The 2024 standards required emissions-control technology that, in the EPA's own words, has not been "adequately demonstrated" to exist. That's a legal concern after the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, which barred the agency from using the Clean Air Act to force sweeping shifts in the nation's power mix.

"The Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy," Zeldin said in a press statement quoted by both outlets. "The Trump administration has come in to protect American energy and to make sure you can afford to keep the lights on."

D.C.'s Own Mandate, D.C.'s Own Exemption

The same op-ed points to Washington D.C. as an example of the affordability gap between green policy and green politicians. D.C.'s renewable energy statute explicitly states the mandate "shall not apply to electricity sold to the District of Columbia government, not including independent agencies, authorities, or instrumentalities." The city wrote itself out of the rule it imposed on everyone else.

The numbers back up why that carve-out matters. D.C. electricity costs rose 66% under the mandate, compared to 50% in Maryland and 20% in Virginia, per the op-ed's figures. Compliance costs quadrupled from $65 million in 2020 to $272.6 million in 2025, adding roughly $775 a year per customer.

New York's Climate Week Contradiction

Daily Wire's opinion coverage of this month's Climate Week gatherings in New York City lays out a similar gap. New York's residential electricity rate hit 29.93 cents per kilowatt-hour in May, third-highest in the country and 62% above the national average, the outlet reported. Only 47% of city residents said they could comfortably afford to run air conditioning during this summer's heat wave, according to Daily Wire.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a Climate Week speaker, has argued there's no "pathway to climate safety without a price on carbon" and that carbon pricing is designed to "raise the price of goods and services that are carbon intensive," per quotes cited by Daily Wire. New York shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant in phases between 2020 and 2021, and wholesale power prices jumped 83.77% to $45.39 per megawatt-hour by 2022, the outlet reported. Gov. Kathy Hochul is now pursuing the state's first new nuclear facility since 1988 while continuing to oppose reopening Indian Point, according to Daily Wire.

The Senate's Last-Ditch Play

On Capitol Hill, CNN reports Senate Republicans are making an eleventh-hour push to show voters something on affordability before the midterms. Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), one of the most endangered Republicans up for reelection, pressed colleagues to "do something real and tangible on affordability," according to a person in the room cited by CNN. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) backed him up. GOP leaders agreed to bring the Senate back to take up a bill addressing electricity price hikes tied to the data center boom.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) has been publicly blunt about his own party's inaction. "I have been chasing my friend, Senator Thune, like he stole Thanksgiving, since we passed the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' to do more on cost of living because we haven't done a damn thing," Kennedy told reporters, according to CNN.

But CNN reports the effort is expected to be blocked by Democrats, who say the bill doesn't go far enough, and critics say the measure—which requires data center operators to cover grid upgrade costs—does little to actually shield ratepayers from hikes.

The Counterargument on Solar

Not everyone agrees the fix is simply killing federal climate rules. Edward Yim, director of clean energy at Lawyers for Good Government, argues in Utility Dive that small-scale, community solar projects, which account for at least 20% of all solar installed in the U.S., cut bills faster and more directly than utility-scale projects, without the land-use fights or permitting delays.

Yim's concern deserves attention. The One Big Beautiful Bill ended the residential solar tax credit, and the EPA separately terminated the Solar for All program, which Yim says would have cut electricity bills by more than 20% for a million Americans. A federal judge vacated the EPA's termination of that program this month, according to Yim's piece in Utility Dive, meaning the fight over Solar for All isn't settled.

The unresolved litigation over Solar for All and the Senate's expected difficulty passing Husted's data center bill leave the actual policy path on electricity affordability unclear heading into the midterms. Whether Congress does anything more than argue about it before November remains an open question.