On a day featuring a blitz of environmental regulatory actions, the EPA yesterday announced two particularly sweeping climate change moves.

Why it matters: The moves reveal the administration's strategy to "revisit" or "revise" both the social cost of carbon as well as the 16-year-old endangerment finding.

• The social cost of carbon — which puts a price on each ton of climate pollution — is a metric helping shape government regulations, making how it is set extremely influential.
• The endangerment finding serves as the scientific justification for regulating greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

Driving the news: The EPA announcement shows that the Trump administration intends to either rescind or modify the endangerment finding by bringing in new considerations and calling upon multiple agencies to contribute to the effort.

• These include the cost of regulations flowing from the finding itself down to the level of automobiles and factories, rather than by directly attacking the science.
• Challenging the science would be fraught, given the absence of any research that doubts the reality and severity of human-caused climate change.

The finding — issued in the wake of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling — held that six greenhouse gases endanger "both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations."

What they're saying: The administration appears to seek "to either rescind or modify the endangerment finding using a new approach with the apparent goal of disabling EPA from regulating greenhouse gas pollution, even though the Supreme Court has already upheld the agency's legal authority to do so," Harvard University law professor Jody Freeman said in an email to Axios.

• "It's a very aggressive, swing for the fences-sounding announcement, meant to send a political message, which is, we don't care about climate change," she said.

The intrigue: When it comes to the social cost of carbon, EPA said it's revising that calculation, too.

• Technically, the social cost of carbon is a dollar estimate of the damages caused by emitting one additional metric ton of greenhouse gases into the air.
• Over the years, each administration has raised and lowered the number, but this goes further than merely setting it at a level and could reshape it for future administrations as well.

Republicans have long criticized the metric, and Trump set it at $1 during his first term.

• "The Biden-Harris administration's so-called 'social cost of carbon' measurement was used to advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.

What's next: Lawsuits, and lots of them, to try to stop the EPA's new climate actions.

Let's explore why EPA went to 11 yesterday, launching formal efforts to unwind over two dozen pollution and climate rules and policies.

Why it matters: Lee Zeldin, President Trump's EPA boss, called it the "largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history."

• It begins the long process to scuttle rules on power plant and auto CO2 emissions; fine particulate matter; coal plant waste; air toxics, and far, far more.

A few takeaways...

😮 The mammoth scope is a choice. "Flood the zone. It's a strategy that is working well for Trump," Capital Alpha Partners' James Lucier tells me.

• "The more things he tries to do at once, the harder it is to stop him," Lucier, the firm's managing director, said via email.

⏰ There's a reason they're starting so early. Pulling this off requires a years-long bureaucratic and courtroom slog.

• "We stress every action announced today will be challenged, and take time (very easily all four years of Trump 2.0) to push through the regulatory process," TD Cowen Washington Research Group said in a note.

↕️ It re-imagines the purpose of EPA. The NYT makes a key point about Zeldin's video remarks, where he said it's about "unleashing" U.S. energy and cutting consumer and business costs.

• "Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970," the paper notes.
• The wider EPA announcement vows the new moves can occur while achieving the "core mission of protecting the environment." But it's a clear shift nonetheless.

What's next: Zeldin will address the big CERAWeek conference tomorrow morning.

HOUSTON — The prominent geothermal startup Fervo Energy has its eyes on an IPO, CEO Tim Latimer tells Axios.

• The company is targeting a multibillion-dollar valuation in discussions with Wall Street banks, a source familiar with the negotiations says.

Why it matters: The plans come as power demand rises, big tech seeks clean electrons, and geothermal enjoys Trump 2.0's atypical embrace of a renewable source.

State of play: Latimer said a potential IPO is likely in 2026 or 2027 but cautioned there's no definite decision about going public.

• "It's looking a lot more like a serious consideration than it has in the past," he said on the sidelines of CERAWeek.
• "There's clearly a huge hunger in the public markets right now to figure out, how are we going to solve the power demand story?"

Driving the news: The company is targeting a $2 billion to $4 billion valuation, a source familiar with the offering discussions tells Axios.

Zoom in: Fervo's had meetings with Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Royal Bank of Canada and SMBC, as well as talks about debt facilities.

Full story

HOUSTON — A big topic at CERAWeek is whether Europe will do what once sounded far-fetched: resume large-scale imports of Russian pipelined gas.

Why it matters: Russia was Europe's dominant supplier before the invasion of Ukraine, providing nearly half of the bloc's gas, but now it's around 13% including LNG.

• But the idea of resuming major pipeline flows has reportedly resurfaced in discussions of a peace deal in Ukraine.
• It comes as Europe struggles with high gas prices that undercut industrial competitiveness.

What they're saying: Senior EU officials here are voicing opposition.

• Jovita Neliupšienė, the EU's ambassador to the U.S., touted the nonbinding goal of bringing Russian gas imports to zero by 2027.
• "The Russian energy sector was never a trusted partner. The weaponization of energy was always the policy," she said at a panel yesterday on European energy security.

Yes, but: Per reports in the FT, Bloomberg and elsewhere, some German industry officials and politicians in multiple European countries have floated a resumption.

The intrigue: Laura Lochman, a State Department energy official, would not directly comment on the prospect of a revival as part of an agreement to end hostilities.

• "The whole focus is trying to get the parties to the table and end up with a lasting and durable peace," said Lochman, acting assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources, on the same panel.
• But she cited barriers to the damaged, sanctioned Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany ever coming into service. Lochman also called diversification "of the utmost importance" and touted the increased U.S. LNG supplies to Europe in her remarks.

What we're watching: Freeport LNG CEO Michael Smith said there's a minority view that some severed Russian flows will resume.

• "And then the majority says it's not coming back," he said on a separate panel yesterday.

"We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly."

My Axios colleagues Zachary Basu and Nathan Bomey have a great look at the partisan war over America's preeminent EV brand.