The Trump administration moved Wednesday to erase limits on greenhouse gases from power plants and to weaken restrictions on their other hazardous emissions, including mercury, arsenic and lead.
Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, hailed a “historic day” and said the proposed changes would unshackle the coal, oil and gas industries from “expensive, unreasonable and burdensome regulations” imposed by the Biden administration.
Together, the moves mark a major blow to efforts to tackle climate change and to reduce threats to public health. The power sector is the country’s second largest source of pollution that is heating the planet, behind transportation. The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive agenda to bolster the production and use of fossil fuels, while also scrapping policies that reduce planet-warming emissions.
“E.P.A. is helping pave the way for American energy dominance, because energy development underpins economic development, which in turn strengthens national security. And, most importantly, the American public voted for it last November,” Mr. Zeldin said at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
He labeled efforts to fight climate change a “cult” and said the pollution limits written by the Biden administration were designed “to destroy industries that didn’t align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry.”
Mercury emissions are a particular hazard from power plants that burn coal and oil. Those plants account for 44 percent of all mercury emissions in the United States, according to the E.P.A. Once in the atmosphere, mercury converts into methylmercury, which can accumulate in fish and other food. Exposure can cause serious neurological damage in developing fetuses and children, and has been associated with respiratory ailments and heart disease in adults.
The use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, has been precipitously dropping in the U.S., replaced by cheaper natural gas. But President Trump has taken several recent actions aimed at trying to revive coal, and on Wednesday, Mr. Zeldin said the country needed to produce and burn more coal to meet rising electricity demand.
“We will use coal for power generation, to mine for critical minerals and to export to our allies,” Mr. Zeldin said.
Coal, oil and gas produce carbon dioxide when burned, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But the E.P.A. in its proposed rule argues that no restrictions on emissions from power plant smokestacks are necessary because pollution from American power plants represented only 3 percent of worldwide greenhouse gases in 2022.
Analysts have called that comparing apples to oranges. That’s because power plants account for a quarter of the greenhouse gases generated by the United States. In 2023, U.S. power plants produced 1.5 billion metric tons of emissions — more than the total greenhouse gases produced by most countries in the world.
“The key rationale Zeldin is using to justify the dismantling of our nation’s protections from power plant pollution is absolutely illogical and indefensible,” said Gina McCarthy, a former E.P.A. administrator under President Barack Obama who also served as former President Joseph R. Biden’s domestic climate policy adviser.
“By giving a green light to more pollution, his legacy will forever be someone who does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health,” she said.
In fact, the Trump administration’s own analysis found that the proposed repeal of carbon dioxide limits would result in a public health cost of $130 billion. That figure includes premature deaths, lost work days and hospitalizations for things like lung and heart diseases or asthma caused by exposure to power plant pollution.
The figure also does not include the economic costs of wildfire, floods, drought and other extreme weather that scientists say has been worsened by climate change. The federal government under the Trump administration no longer considers climate costs when writing regulations.
The Biden E.P.A. estimated that the rule controlling greenhouse gases from power plants would eliminate 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide between now and 2047 — equivalent to preventing the annual emissions from 328 million gasoline-powered cars.
Under Mr. Zeldin, the E.P.A. found that eliminating the regulations would save plant operators and the fossil fuel industry about $19 billion.
“The E.P.A.’s obligation is to protect public health and the environment, and this repeal doesn’t do that,” said Frank Sturges, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group. “It’s wiping out the benefits of the rules on the books in exchange for very little changes to compliance cost for industry.”
Separately, the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonprofit research organization housed in New York University’s law school, found that one year of the U.S. power sector’s emissions causes $370 billion in global climate damages and $56 billion in public health costs in the country. They also contribute to about 5,300 American premature deaths.
Industry leaders and Republican lawmakers from states that produce gas and coal, many of whom joined Mr. Zeldin for the announcement on Wednesday, said the Biden administration rules threatened their economies.
“Under the Biden-led E.P.A., we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our electric grid and our ability to meet the surging power demand,” Representative Troy Balderson, Republican of Ohio, said.
The Biden administration regulation called for the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution that they release into the air, or shut down. To stay open, most plants would have had to use technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions before they reach the atmosphere, and then store those emissions beneath the Earth’s surface.
Jim Matheson, chief executive of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said the Biden-era rules were “unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable” and would threaten the grid.
“Today’s announcements are a welcome course correction that will help electric co-ops reliably meet skyrocketing energy needs and keep the lights on at a cost local families and businesses can afford,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Zeldin’s other proposed rule would weaken emissions limits for mercury, a neurotoxin that impairs brain development, from coal and oil-fired power plants by 70 percent, and would loosen limits on other substances like lead, nickel and arsenic by 67 percent. The proposed rule would also repeal a requirement imposed by the Biden administration that plants continuously monitor the exhaust from their smokestacks.
The E.P.A. has given the public 45 days to comment on the plans. Both rules are expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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