EPA Repeals Plant Emissions Limits

On September 14, Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the final order repealing the majority of the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas (GHG) requirements for U.S. power plants.

Zeldin made the announcement at the G20 Energy Abundance Ministerial in Houston, Texas, and he said the action will save $310 billion. He also proposed rescinding every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector.

Zeldin had announced EPA’s intention to repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants on June 11, when he wrote, “The EPA is proposing that the Clean Air Act (CAA) requires it to make a finding that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution, as a predicate to regulating GHG emissions from those plants.”

Barge Effects

The repeal could directly affect the demand for open hopper barges because it could halt or slow the enforced decline of coal cargoes on the rivers. Even with the years-long decline in coal cargoes due to regulatory pressure on coal-fired power plants, coal still makes up about 25 percent of all barge cargoes, according to the Corps of Engineers’ Center for Waterborne Statistics. In the longer term, the effect would likely be a slowing or stabilizing, perhaps with a slight uptick, rather than a reversal of longer-term trends eroding coal cargoes.

Endangerment Finding

Zeldin’s action is part of the Trump administration’s plan to completely reverse, in practical and regulatory terms, the Supreme Court’s finding in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are “air pollution.” The ruling marked a milestone in both climate law and in EPA’s regulatory powers. Before that ruling, the term “air pollution” referred only to substances directly harmful to human health, like mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide or sulfur dioxide.

Zeldin’s EPA repealed the endangerment finding in February — the finding required by Massachusetts v. EPA that if EPA wanted to regulate greenhouse gases, it had to find them “dangerous to human health,” which that era’s EPA did in 2009. At the time, Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, said of the endangerment finding, “It’s the foundation on which all of the other regulations rest. It is the authorization to regulate greenhouse gasses, and, without that authorization, the legal basis for regulating emissions from automobiles and power plants is fuzzy at best and potentially non-existent.”

In March, Zeldin said, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”

In pursuing this strategy, the EPA relied on narrow legal arguments and definitions rather than broader fights over science. “Whether CAA section 202(a)(1) authorizes the EPA to regulate in response to global climate change concerns by prescribing emission standards is a matter of statutory interpretation, not scientific analysis,” the EPA said.

However, even the libertarian Cato Institute, which agrees in substance with not including greenhouse gases as “air pollutants,” argued that the EPA’s attempt to circumvent Massachusetts v. EPA is unconvincing.

In other words, extended court fights are sure to follow.