EPA’s Repeal of Carbon Pollution Standards Will Dismantle Health Safeguards and Increase Deadly Air Pollution

Former EPA experts warn rollback could keep more polluting power plants online as electricity demand surges
EPA also proposes to rescind all remaining power plant greenhouse gas standards and deny its authority to regulate power plant climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Environmental Protection Agency today repealed most of the federal carbon pollution standards for power plants as the contiguous United States emerges from its hottest summer on record and electricity demand rises sharply, eliminating safeguards that would have reduced climate pollution and dangerous air pollution from the power sector.

The Environmental Protection Network (EPN), representing more than 800 former EPA experts, warned that the rollback could keep more polluting coal and gas generation online while EPA’s economic analysis counts avoided industry compliance costs but leaves the value of avoided illness and premature death off the balance sheet.

The rollback eliminates Clean Air Act protections (under Sections 111(b) and 111(d)) that require existing coal plants and new gas plants to significantly curb carbon emissions. At the same time, EPA is proposing a separate action that would go even further, challenging the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from power plants under Section 111 at all. The final rule and proposal are the latest in a series of actions by EPA seeking to deny the agency’s statutory responsibility to regulate power plant climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

“This is yet another Trump EPA refusal to protect the health of everyone who breathes from the harms of climate and air pollution. The worst impacts will fall on children and people with heart disease and lung disease who are especially vulnerable to pollution from power plant smokestacks,” said Joseph Goffman, former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Adding this repeal to a string of rollbacks that prop up high-polluting power plants defies sound science, common sense, and the agency’s core obligation to protect public health.”

EPA is touting hundreds of billions of dollars in projected savings from the repeal, while acknowledging that its economic model does not account for the effects of changing environmental quality. The agency also assigns no monetary value to the potential health and welfare impacts of increased emissions. That one-sided accounting counts the savings from eliminating pollution protections while leaving the value of avoided illness and premature death off the balance sheet.

The rollback comes as U.S. electricity demand is rising rapidly, driven in significant part by the growth of AI data centers and other large loads. That makes the consequences of weakening power plant pollution protections increasingly significant; more generation from coal and gas can mean more carbon pollution as well as more sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine-particle pollution that contribute to heart and lung disease and premature death. As EPN highlighted in a report released last week, more than 90 percent of the modeled air-pollution health burden associated with AI data centers comes from power plants supplying the centers with electricity.

Today’s action follows other steps weakening or reconsidering major air-pollution protections. Earlier this year, EPA repealed stronger Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants, is reconsidering the Good Neighbor Plan requiring power plants and other industrial sources to cut nitrogen oxide pollution that contributes to smog across state lines, and continues to reconsider the stronger 2024 national soot standard, which was adopted to reduce heart attacks, respiratory illness, and premature deaths. Together, these actions threaten multiple safeguards intended to limit dangerous air pollution and protect public health.

The Costs EPA Leaves Out

According to independent economic modeling by Resources for the Future (RFF), health and climate damages from this regulatory repeal will outweigh avoided compliance costs by 4 to 8 times. The analysis demonstrates that repealing the standards will result in:

$157 billion to $476 billion in public health damages from fine particulate pollution (PM2.5);
1.2 to 5.8 billion metric tons of added carbon pollution (CO2) by 2050;
4.8 to 8.7 times more unmitigated coal generation by 2040 than expected with protections in place; and
Up to 285,000 additional metric tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and 194,000 metric tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted on average annually.

“This is one of dozens of federal actions making a dirtier AI buildout more likely,” said Marc Boom, EPN Senior Director of Public Affairs. “At the very moment data centers are driving electricity demand sharply higher, EPA is stripping away safeguards that help prevent that new demand from translating into more pollution, more illness, and more costs for families and communities.”

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ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION NETWORK
The Environmental Protection Network is a nonpartisan organization comprising more than 800 former EPA scientists, toxicologists, chemists, biologists, engineers, and policy analysts — many of whom spent decades as career experts inside the agency. They assessed cancer and developmental risks, studied links between pollution and fertility and chronic disease, investigated contaminated communities, and brought enforcement actions to hold corporate polluters accountable. EPN was founded in 2017 to serve as an independent voice promoting science-based policies that protect families’ health.