DTE's Energy's Monroe Power Plant on the shore of Lake Erie in Michigan. Photo: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed repealing rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions and rolling back mercury and hazardous air pollutants from power plants.
Why it matters: The Environmental Protection Agency's action is the most significant under President Trump to tear down Democratic administrations' climate regulations.
- The proposals now go to public comment and ultimately will face legal challenges.
Driving the news: EPA wants to repeal the 2015 emissions standards for new fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Obama administration as well as the Biden administration's 2024 rule for new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants.
- The CO2 and mercury rules were designed to regulate coal, natural gas and oil "out of existence," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said during a news conference.
- A cycle of speakers at the EPA press event — mostly Republican members of Congress — lamented the closure of coal-fired power and called it a threat to the reliability country's power grid.
- The Navajo Generating Station — a coal-fired plant in Arizona that closed in 2019 — "was the most efficient power plant in the country, and sadly we had to tear it down," Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said.
Between the lines: Zeldin deflected questions about legal vulnerability of the rule.
- He emphasized EPA wasn't seeking to repeal the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS), which govern emissions for mercury and other air pollutants emitted by units with a capacity of more than 25 megawatts.
- "What a final rule will look like is a decision to be made in the future," Zeldin said.
The other side: "The Trump administration's subservience to its fossil fuel megadonors is on full display," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's top Democrat, said in a statement.
- "By gutting these clean air standards, the EPA is giving a free pass to the nation's dirtiest power plants and most toxic polluters."
- Sierra Club climate policy director Patrick Drupp said his group "will not stand by and let this corrupt administration destroy critical, life-saving guardrails."
