Keeping Zombie coal plants open to own the Libs.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to weaken a Biden-era regulation that required power plants to slash pollutants, including the emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin that impairs brain development, according to an internal agency document.
Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, intends to announce the proposed changes within days, according to two people who have been briefed on the agency’s plans. Mr. Zeldin also will release a separate proposal to eliminate limits on greenhouse gases from power plants, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss agency plans.
Together, the changes represent a repudiation of efforts taken by the Biden administration to tackle climate change and address the disproportionate levels of air pollution faced by communities near power plants and other industrial sites. Once finalized, likely at the end of this year, both rules are expected to face legal challenges.
The moves are part of a broad strategy by the Trump administration to expand the use of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. President Trump has taken several recent steps to try to boost the use of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.
Scrapping the Biden-era power plant rule would effectively shelve regulations for the nation’s second-biggest producer of climate pollution — the electricity sector — which accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.
The move will come one day after the executive director of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, Jarrod Agen, defended the administration’s focus on coal and natural gas for maintaining the reliability of the electric grid. Speaking at POLITICO’s annual Energy Summit on Tuesday, Agen said Trump is not considering renewable sources such as solar power for the nation’s energy mix, despite those technologies’ support from some GOP lawmakers as well as business leaders such as Elon Musk.
“The president’s priorities are around turning around fossil fuels,” Agen said.
One of the people familiar with EPA’s plans said the agency does not anticipate writing a replacement rule because it is “hopeful” the agency will prevail in a separate effort to unwind its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases harm the public. That declaration, known as the endangerment finding, forms the legal basis for regulating those emissions.