EPA Set to Repeal Biden-Era Carbon Limits for Coal and Gas Power Plants

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to formally rescind carbon pollution standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants as soon as Monday, September 14, according to Bloomberg News and the New York Times, both citing people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly before the announcement.

The rollback is expected to be unveiled alongside a Group of 20 energy ministers' meeting in Houston, where EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to make the announcement, according to the New York Times and The Hindu.

What's Being Repealed

The rule being scrapped dates to 2024, when the Biden administration's EPA finalized standards requiring existing and future fossil-fuel power plants to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, largely by installing carbon capture and storage technology. The Spokesman-Review, citing Bloomberg reporting, notes the 2024 rule effectively forced the current coal fleet to capture most of its carbon emissions by 2039.

Alongside the repeal, the EPA plans to propose a separate rule striking down the federal finding that greenhouse gases from power plants specifically endanger public health, according to the Guardian and Carbon Herald. That would functionally create a power-sector-specific reversal of the endangerment finding, on top of the agency's earlier repeal of the broader 2009 endangerment finding covering greenhouse gases generally, which The Hindu reports happened earlier this year.

The power sector is the second-largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the New York Times. An analysis by New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, cited by the Spokesman-Review, found that if the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would rank as the sixth-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet based on 2022 data.

The Administration's Case

Zeldin has said the rule change would remove billions of dollars in costs for the power industry and help "unleash American energy," according to the Associated Press. The administration frames this as part of a broader affordability push. Breitbart reports the EPA's separate repeal of 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards amendments for coal- and oil-fired plants is projected to save $670 million, and that revisions to a related oil-and-gas rule finalized in April are expected to save $2.5 billion over 15 years.

Under the new rules, power plants would still face limits on mercury, arsenic and other contaminants, according to the New York Times, meaning this repeal is specifically about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, not all pollution controls.

President Trump has repeatedly called human-caused climate change "a hoax," according to The Hindu, and has pushed to remove environmental regulations since returning to office, including this year's repeal of vehicle climate standards.

The Case Against It

Environmental groups and the rule's critics argue the repeal strips away the only federal mechanism directly limiting the largest stationary source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. If it survives legal challenges, they contend it could bar future administrations from regulating power-plant carbon emissions at all, a point both the Guardian and the New York Times raise as a structural consequence of how the rule is being written.

The Associated Press also notes that Obama- and Biden-era power plant rules were aimed partly at cleaning up pollution concentrated in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities near fossil-fuel facilities, a dimension the administration's cost-savings framing does not directly address. That is a legitimate concern for critics to raise: regulatory rollbacks that reduce compliance costs for utilities can also mean less pressure on plants sited near vulnerable communities to cut emissions further. Whether this specific repeal materially changes local pollution exposure, as opposed to greenhouse gas trajectories, is not established in the current reporting, since mercury and arsenic limits are reported to remain in place.

What Happens Next

This is not the rule's first legal test. The Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in 2022, and a separate court ruling struck down the first Trump administration's replacement rule, according to the Spokesman-Review. That history suggests the coming repeal will not be the last word either way.

Environmental groups are expected to sue immediately, according to the AP and the Guardian. The EPA did not respond to weekend requests for comment from multiple outlets, and the agency's public announcement in Houston will determine whether the final rule matches what officials described anonymously ahead of Monday's rollout.