The Trump Administration has repealed federal rules aimed at limiting carbon pollution from coal and gas-powered plants, a move the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) justified with claims that power plant emissions do not significantly impact global climate change and that potential health harms are too uncertain.
The EPA announced the repeal on September 14, a decision that directly challenges decades of scientific research demonstrating the significant health and environmental benefits of reducing pollution. According to data from 2024, the U.S. power sector is the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, releasing 1,427 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. If considered a country, the U.S. power sector would rank as the sixth-largest global emitter.
This rollback comes as the United Nations warns that the world is on track to exceed the 1.5°C target for limiting global warming, projecting a rise of 1.8°C without immediate emission reductions. The repealed regulations, finalized by the Biden Administration in 2024, had mandated that existing coal plants install carbon capture technology by 2039 and that gas plants operate on cleaner fuels like hydrogen.
The Biden administration had predicted that these rules would prevent thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of asthma cases annually, projecting up to $370 billion in climate and public health benefits over two decades. This repeal is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump Administration to dismantle federal climate regulations, including the repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding, which legally underpinned greenhouse gas regulation, and eased restrictions on polluting chemicals.
The administration has also sought to keep aging coal plants operational, despite coal being an expensive power source with documented adverse health effects, including increased risks of asthma and cancer. In February, the Department of Energy ordered several coal plants slated for retirement to remain open, and the EPA loosened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants.
Experts and scientific analyses counter the EPA's claims about uncertain health impacts. A previous EPA analysis from 2025 itself found that eliminating the carbon pollution standards would lead to thousands of premature deaths and tens of billions in increased health costs. Jim Zhang, a professor of global and environmental health at Duke University, stated that scientific evidence clearly links pollutants from power plants to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, exacerbating conditions like asthma and heart disease, and leading to increased deaths and emergency room visits.
Communities located near power plants, often lower-income populations, face disproportionately higher health risks, including asthma, cancer, and heart and lung disease. Exposure to fine particulate matter from coal-fired plants is associated with more than double the risk of mortality compared to similar pollution from other sources.
"If you take away the regulation, then that pollution is going to happen, and these health effects are going to happen," said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Beyond immediate health concerns, increased carbon dioxide emissions contribute to climate change, intensifying extreme weather events, wildfires, and other phenomena that carry their own health consequences. These events can cause injuries, disrupt medical care, impact mental health, and compromise access to clean water and food.
"The atmosphere and the climate don't recognize those misstatements, and we will be stuck with a nastier, more virulent form of climate change," said Michael Greenstone, director of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth at the University of Chicago, emphasizing that the health impacts of these policy decisions are global and will persist regardless of U.S. regulatory changes.