September 4, 2025 - Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency finished taking public input on a proposal to repeal the Biden-era update to the Mercury Air and Toxics Standards, which imposes stricter limits on power plants’ emissions of dangerous air pollutants.

This proposed rollback is part of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s deregulatory agenda, which purports to lower the cost of living. But EPA’s own analysis shows that industry will pocket the cost savings due to the repeal, leaving everyday Americans nothing but dirtier air.

EPA’s proposed repeal would allow power plants to emit more hazardous air pollutants and dodge the planned installation of continuous monitoring equipment, which would improve compliance with standards.

Moreover, the repeal reopens a loophole that allows plants burning a certain class of high-mercury coal, known as lignite, to bypass the default mercury emissions limit for coal plants, and instead operate under a standard that allows three times the emissions.

Through this loophole, lignite plants have historically emitted 30 percent of the coal sector’s mercury emissions, while generating only 7 percent of its power. 

EPA backed its proposal with a regulatory impact analysis that assesses the costs and benefits of the repeal. A repeal would most directly affect the coal plants that are not yet compliant with the Biden-era standards, which have not yet taken effect. 

If EPA finalizes its proposal, these plants would no longer have to invest in additional pollution control methods.  

Additionally, power plants do not operate in isolation; they are part of an intricate electricity market. Relaxing standards for coal plants will improve their comparative advantage with respect to cleaner energy sources, which could displace electricity production towards dirtier fuels and potentially rearrange the sector.  

To account for these wider effects, EPA uses a sophisticated model of the U.S. electricity sector. 

This tool allows the agency to simulate the behavior of the entire sector under different regulatory and policy scenarios, such as the proposed repeal, and to understand how the proposal would affect electricity pricing, emissions rates and more.  

By comparing simulations with and without the Biden-era standards, EPA projects that the repeal will increase the power sector’s mercury emissions by about 20 percent and cause increases of other hazardous air pollutants, such as lead, chromium and nickel. 

These pollutants are associated with public health consequences, including reproductive problems, respiratory problems, cancer and neurotoxic effects that are particularly dangerous for fetuses, infants and children, whose brains still are rapidly developing.  

On the benefits side of the ledger, EPA’s model anticipates savings of $1 billion in avoided compliance costs. But, due to quirks of the electricity market, the model projects that electricity prices will decrease by a whopping 0.0 percent.

In other words, according to EPA’s own analysis, essentially every cent saved from ditching the Biden-era standards will remain in coal plant owners’ pockets, and none of the savings will translate into more power.

EPA’s deregulatory effort is not lowering the cost of living — it is bartering public health for industry profits.

EPA’s proposed repeal of the Biden-era standards is yet another desperate attempt to rescue an obsolete industry at the expense of public health and with no benefits to electricity consumers.

It’s a raw deal for the public. EPA should retain the Biden-era standards.