President-elect Donald Trump’s victory means a U-turn for EPA climate regulations.
Some of the most stringent rules enacted by the Biden administration will likely end up in the dust bin, such as the agency’s regulations to reduce climate pollution from power plants, according to analysts. Other standards may survive in a weakened form, like the administration’s rules to lower methane emissions. They enjoy limited industry support, and leaving the sector unregulated could leave it vulnerable to worse consequences at home and abroad.
“I think the power plant rule is pretty easy for them to revoke,” said Jeff Holmstead, who served as EPA’s air chief under President George W. Bush. “There’s really no one in industry who supports that rule. People just think that EPA was entirely unrealistic.”
EPA relied on carbon capture and storage technology to establish carbon reduction rates in the rule it finalized last May. Those emissions controls that haven’t been widely deployed, and Republican-led states and the coal industry have launched legal challenges contending the rule is just a backdoor attempt to force plants into retirement. The Supreme Court’s conservative justices have already hinted that they might agree.
