EPA’s 2025 greenhouse gas emissions rollback

The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The New York Times.

In its proposed regulation, the agency argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions. Eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the agency said.

But in the United States, the power sector was the second biggest source of greenhouse gases, behind transportation, according to the most recent data available on the E.P.A. website. And globally, power plants account for about 30 percent of the pollution that is driving climate change.

The E.P.A. sent the draft to the White House for review on May 2. It could undergo changes before it is formally released and the public is given the opportunity to offer comments, likely in June.

The proposed regulation is part of a broader attack by the Trump administration on the established science that greenhouse gases threaten human health and the environment. Scientists have overwhelmingly concluded that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal are dangerously heating the planet.

“Fossil fuel power plants are the single largest industrial source of climate destabilizing carbon dioxide in the United States, and emit pollution levels that exceed the vast majority of countries in the world,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group.

She called the proposed regulation “an abuse of the E.P.A.’s responsibility under the law” and added, “It flies in the face of common sense and puts millions of people in harms way to say the single largest industrial source of carbon dioxide in the United States is not significant.”

The draft reviewed by The New York Times said the agency “is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants.” That would include Biden-era requirements that existing coal-fired units capture carbon pollution before it leaves the smokestack and store it, and that require some new gas plants use technologies that pollute less.

“We are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing all Americans with access to reliable and affordable energy,” Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a statement.

Mr. Zeldin’s spokeswoman, Molly Vaseliou, declined to offer more information about the plan other than to say “the proposal will be published once it has completed interagency review and been signed by the administrator.”

The Trump administration is methodically uprooting policies aimed at curbing climate change, and the E.P.A. is at the epicenter of that effort. In recent weeks, Mr. Zeldin has shuttered offices responsible for regulating climate and air pollution, and has launched the repeal of more than two dozen regulations and policies.

The agency is feeling pressure from the White House to finalize its deregulations by December, according to two people briefed on internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe them. That would be an extraordinarily fast pace. Rewriting regulations can typically take more than a year.

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