lawsuit<\/a> challenging the revocation of that finding in February, saying it will risk the health and welfare of US citizens.<\/p>\nThe rescinding of restrictions on coal and gas power plant emissions announced on Monday is expected to similarly be challenged in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump wants to let power plants pollute as much as they want. This will result in serious health risks for families, our water and air, and the entire planet,\u201d Democratic Senator Patty Murray, who represents the northwestern state of Washington, said in a statement on X. \u201cAmericans want clean air and clean water. We all need to speak up to stop this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The announcement on Monday was made on the sidelines of a G20 ministerial meeting in Houston on \u201cenergy abundance\u201d. It was both a nod to the important role oil-rich Texas plays in the energy industry and a potential snub of European and other international allies in attendance who have pursued environmentally friendly policies that the Trump administration has moved to undo.<\/p>\n
Trump called climate change \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world\u201d at a speech to the United Nations last year, and his administration withdrew the US \u2014 for the second time \u2014 from the 2015 Paris climate accord that sets voluntary goals to curb planet-warming emissions.<\/p>\n
The US president has boasted of US energy abundance even as the Iran war continues to disrupt global fuel markets and gas prices top $4.31 a gallon ($1.14 per litre), up more than a dollar from a year ago.<\/p>\n
The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Trump\u2019s repeated pledge to \u201cunleash American energy\u201d and make it easier for utilities to supply electricity for homes and businesses.<\/p>\n
The power plant rule is among nearly three dozen environmental regulations that EPA\u2019s Zeldin targeted in early 2025 when he announced what he called the \u201cmost consequential day of deregulation in American history\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zeldin said in proposing the new rules last year that they were meant to end the \u201cwar on so much of our US domestic energy supply\u201d by former President Joe Biden and Barack Obama\u2019s administrations.<\/p>\n
\u2018Enormous costs\u2019<\/p>\n
Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and pledged to challenge the rules in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cTearing down our national protections against climate pollution from power plants will have enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families across the country,\u201d said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. \u201cAmericans everywhere are already suffering from record-breaking heat, more dangerous floods and storms, and skyrocketing insurance costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EPA has a legal responsibility to protect the public from harmful pollution, Patton said, adding that \u201cclean, affordable and reliable technologies are widely available to power our homes and businesses\u201d.<\/p>\n
Coal, gas and oil-fired\u202fpower\u202fplants\u202fare responsible for\u202fabout one-quarter of the nation\u2019s total climate pollution, second only to the transportation sector.\u202fPollution from power plants is one of the largest sources of climate-changing pollution in the world.<\/p>\n
The rules targeted by Trump\u2019s EPA could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275bn each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press analysis last year that included the agency\u2019s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.<\/p>\n
Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead \u2014 and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases, driving Earth\u2019s warming to deadlier levels.<\/p>\n
Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would have been forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued in 2024. Those rules are now being upended.<\/p>\n
In its proposal last year, the EPA argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants \u201cdo not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution\u201d or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants \u201care a small and decreasing part of global emissions\u2033, the EPA said.<\/p>\n
Zeldin, a Republican and former congressman, said Biden-era actions were designed to \u201csuffocate our economy in order to protect the environment\u201d, with the intent to regulate the coal industry \u201cout of existence\u201d and make it \u201cdisappear\u201d.<\/p>\n
The coal industry and groups representing coal-fired power plants have denounced the Biden rule as \u201coverreach\u201d by the EPA and urged its repeal.<\/p>\n
Lifting the rule will protect grid reliability and shield electricity consumers from higher costs at a time of surging demand from data centers, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, according to America\u2019s Power, a trade organisation for the US coal fleet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is repealing rules limiting emissions by coal and gas power plants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[56613,65,219,273,111,43,139,69,27199,147,1430,1431],"class_list":["post-601836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-crisis","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}