June 13, 2025 - The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed repealing rules that limit emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the action would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help unleash American energy.

Notably, this includes the EPA power plant rule, which would require the longest-running existing coal-fired units and most heavily utilized new gas turbines to implement carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) by various compliance dates in the 2030s.

Under that requirement, coal plants which plan to stay open beyond 2039 would have to reduce or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032. Coal plants that are scheduled to close by 2039 would have to cut their emissions 16% by 2030, while those that are set to retire by 2032 would be exempted from the new rule.

New natural gas-fired plants that run more than 40% of the time, considered “baseload” by the agency, would also have to eliminate 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions using CCS by 2032. 

The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic (MATS) pollutants. The Trump administration has already granted exceptions to 47 companies from MATS standards. Southern Company owns the most exempted coal-fired units (14 units at five facilities), followed by NRG and TVA (each with four coal-fired facilities).

The power plant rules are among about 30 environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in March when he announced what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”

Zeldin said Wednesday the new rules would help end what he called the Biden and Obama administrations’ “war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.”

EPA is also proposing to repeal the 2015 emissions standards for new fossil fuel-fired power plants issued during the Obama-Biden Administration. The first Clean Power Plan was never fully implemented and was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022.

Opponents of the EPA power plant rule have argued that its implementation would jeopardize grid reliability and that the emission reduction technologies proposed by the Biden EPA aren’t ready for prime time. They praised the Trump Administration’s announcement Wednesday.

“We were on a collision course: pushing carbon reductions aggressively while dispatchable sources were being retired faster than replacements could come online,” said David Naylor, president and CEO of Rayburn Electric Cooperative in Texas. “Rules should support both transition and resilience, not force a trade-off. This policy shift helps us reset the conversation, allowing for a more practical path to emissions reduction without compromising reliability.”

Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court. The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press analysis that included the agency’s own prior assessments and a wide range of other research.

The power sector is the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation.

In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” 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 “are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,” the EPA said, adding: “This Administration’s priority is to promote the public health or welfare through energy dominance and independence secured by using fossil fuels to generate power.”