September 9, 2026 - Any day now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to repeal standards to curb carbon emissions from power plants. It is the latest in this administration’s attempts to ignore the real threat of climate change and to give a free pass to the oldest, dirtiest power plants to keep polluting our air and harming our children. It’s also based on unsound technical and legal analysis—and will not survive legal challenge. 

The Trump EPA proposed axing the 2024 standards last year, and a final rule to follow through on that plan has been under review at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs since May. 

This repeal made no sense when the EPA proposed it last summer; it makes even less sense now. The United States is on track to log the hottest summer on record—one in which millions of Americans suffered through harsh storms, deadly flooding, dangerous fires and toxic smoke, and unrelenting heat waves. Not only do these storms and fires pose risks to our families and health, but they also endanger the electrical grid.  

Gutting standards to address the largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions is sticking our nation’s head in the sand, just as the dangers of climate pollution are becoming more tangible every day. 

So how did we get here?

In 2024, the EPA issued standards under Clean Air Act Section 111 to reduce carbon pollution from new gas plants and existing coal plants. These were commonsense standards that were predicted to result in $390 billion in total climate and health benefits, more than 20 times the costs to industry. For just 2035 alone, the EPA originally found that the rules would prevent 1,200 premature deaths and 360,000 asthma attacks. 

And not only would these standards save lives and save money, but they were also reasonable and clearly authorized under the Clean Air Act and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. 

They were based on what power plants could achieve by either co-firing with gas or installing carbon capture equipment on their smokestacks, exactly as the Supreme Court had said was allowed in its West Virginia v. EPA decision—and exactly as the EPA has regulated under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act for decades. Based on an extensive legal, scientific, and technical record, these rules would have required the largest plants that run the most to reduce emissions by 90 percent over a reasonable time period; smaller plants that don’t run as often were only subject to minimal efficiency standards. 

And while the standards went into effect right away, the rules didn’t mandate major changes to what states and plant owners did until 2032, giving them plenty of time to plan for what they would need to do to comply. 

But some of the owners of the oldest and dirtiest plants in the United States balked at these straightforward rules. The coal industry, to whom EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has said he’s delivered most of its wish list, made scrapping these standards one of its top demands of the Trump administration. 

The EPA said it would do just that last year, arguing in that proposal that greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector—the second-largest source in the United States—do not make a “significant contribution” to the problem. It also argued that the carbon capture technology that the EPA relied upon to set the standards is not technically feasible to deliver the emissions reductions mandated by the 2024 EPA rules.

As NRDC and our partners made clear in our comments to the EPA on this plan, those arguments were not supported by the facts or the law. Power sector emissions account for a quarter of total U.S. emissions, so if they cannot be counted as significant, it’s hard to conceive of any emissions that would. In fact, if the U.S. power sector were a nation, it would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter after China, the United States, India, and Russia. That’s a pretty “significant contribution” to the problem. 

In fact, the District of Columbia Circuit Court has already affirmed that it’s “not even close” as to whether greenhouse gas emissions from power plants “significantly contribute” to dangerous air pollution: Carbon pollution from power plants contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution “under any reasonable threshold or definition,” it found. 

And there is a robust record that carbon capture is technologically feasible and can affordably deliver the emissions reductions laid out in the original EPA plan. Even if the EPA found the technology couldn’t deliver a 90 percent reduction, how about 80 percent or 75 percent? The correct action by the EPA would be to amend—not end—the standards. That’s not what the EPA proposed to do, however.

Relatedly, earlier this year, the EPA finalized its plan to rescind the endangerment finding for vehicles and roll back the tailpipe pollution standards. While that action is parallel to this one, the endangerment finding repeal did not automatically mean the EPA standards for power plants were repealed. (You may recall that as part of that repeal, the EPA argued it was “futile” to address climate change; given the increasing level of climate-fueled storms, fires, and heat waves, we will have to see if the EPA is willing to recycle that outrageous argument.)  

NRDC’s federal climate legal director, Meredith Hankins, explains why the endangerment finding is so critical to our fight against climate change and how the EPA’s repeal of it not only goes against overwhelming scientific evidence but also has no legal standing.  

So what will the EPA do now?

Recent news reports say that the EPA has now decided to split its rulemaking into two parts: a final rule repealing the Biden-era standards on a technical basis that carbon capture cannot be relied upon to set that standard; and a supplemental proposal that will somehow argue that the EPA doesn’t have the authority—at all—to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. 

We will have to see what the EPA does. NRDC’s lawyers will be looking closely at its technical and legal justification, and we are ready to go to court if it relies on the same kind of untethered and shoddy arguments it made to justify repealing the endangerment finding. (With our partners, we sued over that repeal on the day it was published in the Federal Register.) 

Five key facts to keep in mind

1. Power plants are the largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for a quarter of the nation’s climate pollution.

2. If the U.S. power sector were a nation, it would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter after China, the United States, India, and Russia.

3. While President Trump promised to cut electricity bills in half, the administration’s energy policies are in fact raising rates—electricity bills hit a record high in July. A new NRDC analysis found that Americans are set to pay an additional $30 billion in electricity costs by 2035 as a result of this administration’s actions.

4. The EPA’s statutory duties under the plain text of the Clean Air Act are clear: It must regulate sources like power plants that “cause, or contribute significantly to, air pollution, which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The Supreme Court’s decisions in Massachusetts v. EPA, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, and West Virginia v. EPA make clear that greenhouse gases must be considered in this framework.

5. Last, while news reports say the EPA may have a new proposal stating that the agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, the Trump Department of Justice has said just the opposite in its amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the upcoming Suncor Energy v. Boulder County case. It said that Boulder’s state law claims against oil and gas producers should be tossed out because the Clean Air Act gives the EPA exclusive authority to regulate greenhouse gases. 

So what does this all mean?

If the EPA proceeds as we expect, the existing coal plants that the Trump administration is currently forcing to keep open—and all the new gas plants being proposed right now—will have no requirement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at all. With the effects of climate change becoming more real to Americans every day, this administration is ignoring the facts so that its allies in the fossil fuel industry can continue to pollute our air and damage our future with no constraint.