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Climate scientists are slamming plans from Donald Trump’s administration to end limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting a plan to end all limits on greenhouse gases emitted by coal and gas-fired power plants, The New York Times reports.
The agency argues that the greenhouse gases emitted by these plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution,” according to a draft plan reviewed by the newspaper.
However, fossil fuels are the “single largest industrial source of climate destabilizing carbon dioxide in the U.S.,” according to Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. The United States is one of the world’s top greenhouse gas producers —second only to China.
The new rule is “an abuse of the E.P.A.’s responsibility under the law,” Patton said.
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The agency sent the draft to the White House on May 2, and it’s expected to be released in June, according to The Times.
Climate scientists say the potential move is “deeply concerning.”
“If true, this is a deeply concerning move from the Trump EPA,” according to Dr. Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“There is no meaningful path to reducing U.S. carbon emissions without limiting greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants — the largest domestic stationary source of [greenhouse gases],” she wrote.
“This is an agency with ‘environmental protection’ in its name and it is trying to slow down phasing out of these plants and disincentivize renewables,” added environmental researcher Dr. Diren Kocakuşak.
Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the Sierra Club, told The Washington Post the move is “reprehensible” and designed to “curry favor and earn some brownie points with the fossil-fuel industry.”
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The rule comes after a 2022 Supreme Court decision that said the EPA can’t force utilities to shut down coal plants and switch to renewable energy sources.
The Trump administration’s new rule will also overturn rules introduced in President Joe Biden’s final year in office, which sought to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
“Many have voiced concerns that the last administration’s replacement for that rule is similarly overreaching and an attempt to shut down affordable and reliable electricity generation in the United States, raising prices for American families, and increasing the country’s reliance on foreign forms of energy,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent.
The proposal will be published after an interagency review and approval from EPA chief Lee Zeldin, the spokesperson said.
“In reconsidering the Biden-Harris rule that ran afoul of Supreme Court case law, we are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing all Americans with access to reliable and affordable energy,” Zeldin said in a statement.
The rule will likely face legal challenges once it’s official, but some say it could open the door for further deregulation.
“If the administration is going to do this, it is the strategically smartest way,” Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western University, told the Times.
“If they’re successful with regard to power plants, they’re pretty much going to be successful with everything else,” he added.
