On Sep 14th, 2026, the Trump Administration’s EPA finalized the repeal of most provisions of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards (CPS) for fossil-fuel-fired power plants. In this final partial repeal, EPA eliminates standards following its reevaluation of systems for emissions reduction, but leaves behind some efficiency-based standards for existing coal and new gas plants. Simultaneously, the EPA has issued a supplemental proposal that would eliminate all greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for power plants and strip the agency of its authority to limit power plant pollution in the future.

Find our full press release, including quotes from coalition members, here. Please view and download our fact sheet below:

Why It Matters

The repeal of the 2024 CPS and the dangerous new proposal to end the EPA’s authority to limit power-plant pollution are part of the Trump administration’s costly and deadly “deregulatory agenda” that has rolled back decades of progress on public health, climate, clean energy, and limits on corporate polluters.

These regulatory rollbacks have put more than 30,000 lives at risk annually and reversed at least $275 billion in annual cost savings. Low-income communities, Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color (i.e., environmental justice communities) disproportionately host the nation’s polluting coal and gas power plants and hence bear the brunt of the health costs associated with power sector pollution.

Fossil fuel-based power plants are the second-largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States, accelerating climate change and supercharging extreme weather events. Hotter summers and colder winters lead to higher utility bills, while the serious health consequences of toxic pollution and extreme weather result in lost workdays and higher medical bills. The costs of recovery from future climate disasters are enormous and could be significantly reduced by regulating carbon emissions from the power sector while transitioning to community-led clean energy solutions.

What’s in the Supplemental Proposal?

EPA proposes that it lacks authority under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate GHG emissions from the power sector. EPA is making a number of arguments to support this assertion of lack of authority:

CAA only authorizes the regulation of air pollution that affects us through “local and regional exposure”, not through global exposure. EPA argues that power plants as a source do not “contribute significantly” to air pollution that endangers public health and welfare.
Even if we regulated power plants for climate impacts, this would have a minimal impact on addressing global climate change concerns

Throughout the proposal, EPA refers to rescission of the endangerment finding, the scientific finding that lays the foundation for regulating GHG emissions. EPA also points to recent Supreme Court cases, particularly West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright, as evidence that the Court has asserted that Congress has not clearly authorized EPA to regulate for climate change.

If finalized, the proposal would repeal the remaining efficiency-based GHG standards for coal and new gas plants. When this proposal becomes final, it will likely be challenged in the courts. If upheld in courts, this could end federal climate regulation for power plants.

What You Can Do

The EPA will hold a public hearing and solicit public comments on the supplemental proposal to strip the agency of its authority to limit future power plant pollution. You can:

Register to speak or attend the public hearing. The hearing will be held via virtual platform on October 1, 2026. The EPA will announce further details here.
Submit a testimonial on how power plant pollution and climate change impact your and your community’s health and well-being in this docket by November 02, 2026.

Public comments matter now more than ever. They build the administrative record that courts will scrutinize if these rules are challenged, and a strong, well-documented opposition can slow or complicate the repeal even if it doesn’t stop it outright. This is a critical moment to include environmental justice voices in the official record. Environmental justice communities are often the only voices bringing evidence of local pollution impacts to light, and without them, the record risks reflecting only industry cost arguments.

Deep Dive

What is being repealed?

In 2024, the Biden Administration finalized new GHG emissions standards for existing coal and new gas-fired power plants. In 2026, the Trump Administration partially repealed the rule and proposed eliminating the EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions from the power sector altogether.

What Biden’s EPA Did:

Here are some of the major elements of the 2024 final rule:

Existing Coal: For existing coal plants, the Biden EPA set emissions standards based on what could be achieved if coal plants installed carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology at a 90 percent capture rate. The Biden EPA argued that CCS is affordable and an “adequately demonstrated technology” that can achieve significant emissions reduction. Several environmental justice advocates opposed the use of CCS as a system of emissions reduction. The final rule also included separate emissions standards for these early-retirement coal plants. The EPA set the emissions standard based on what could be achieved if the plant switched to burning 40 percent natural gas.
New Gas: The Biden EPA set separate standards for three categories of new gas plants: base load plants that are usually highly efficient plants that run continuously to provide a steady flow of power to the grid, intermediate load plants, and low load turbines that provide power during high demand and for short periods of time.
- For baseload plants, the emissions standards were set in two phases. In the first phase, base-load gas plants would have had to meet standards for efficiency and operational improvements. For the second phase, base load plants would have had to meet standards set based on CCS at a 90 percent capture rate.
- For intermediate load plants, the final rule set emissions standards based on “highly efficient simple cycle generation.” For low-load plants, the emissions standards were based on “the use of lower-emitting fuels”.

What Trump’s EPA is doing:

In June 2025, the Trump EPA proposed to repeal the Biden-era 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards. The proposal included a primary proposal and an alternate proposal. The primary proposal was to rescind all GHG limits for power plants. In the primary proposal, the Trump EPA argued that power plant emissions do not “contribute significantly” to air pollution in a way that endangers public health or welfare and therefore do not warrant regulation under the Clean Air Act. The alternate proposal was to repeal the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards based on a narrower set of arguments – that CCS as a technology is not an adequately demonstrated emissions reduction technology and that natural gas co-firing as an emissions reduction pathway would be considered fuel switching, which is impermissible under the Supreme Court case West Virginia v EPA.

In Sep 2026, a final partial repeal of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards was issued, bundled with a new supplemental proposal to rescind the EPA’s legal basis for regulating power-plant carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. Here are the details:

Partial Repeal: The Trump EPA adheres closer to the alternate proposal in its 2025 proposal. The final rule takes away the CCS-based standards and co-firing with natural gas-based standards for existing coal and new gas plants. The efficiency-based standards remain in place.
Supplemental Proposal: The Trump EPA argues that it is beyond EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate GHG emissions for power plants and that GHG emissions produce a “degree of adverse impacts to public health and welfare”. If finalized, the efficiency-based GHG standards for power plants would be wiped away as well.

Timeline

May 2023: The Biden Administration’s EPA proposes standards for new gas plants and existing coal plants. Read comments submitted by several environmental justice Platform members opposing several components of this proposal.

March 2024: EPA opens a non-regulatory docket to gather input about ways to design a strong and durable approach to regulate GHG emissions from existing gas plants. Read the letter sent by several environmental justice Platform members in response to this docket.

May 2024: EPA published the final GHG standards for existing coal and new gas plants.

June 2025: EPA proposed to repeal the 2024 GHG standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. Read comments submitted by several environmental justice Platform members.

Aug. 2025: EPA proposed eliminating the “Endangerment Finding,” a 2009 scientific determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health. This finding has been the legal foundation for basically all of EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations. Read comments submitted by several environmental justice Platform members.

Feb 2026: EPA made it official, finalizing the repeal of the Endangerment Finding. Read our press release here.

Sep 2026: EPA published a final rule to partially repeal the Biden administration’s 2024 carbon pollution standards and issued a new proposal to rescind EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions from the power sector.

Sources

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2026, September 14). Partial repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units (Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124; FRL-12674-02-OAR). https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2026-09/12674-carbon-pollution-standards-repeal-frm-preamble-20260914.pdf
Environmental Protection Agency. (2025, June 17). Repeal of greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired electric generating units. Federal Register, 90, 25752–25781. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/06/17/2025-10991/repeal-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-standards-for-fossil-fuel-fired-electric-generating-units
Associated Press. (2025, June 5). Trump EPA rollbacks would weaken rules projected to save billions of dollars and thousands of lives. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/epa-zeldin-pollution-rules-analysis-savings-health-0a289aec2507ed38d386680afdd0ea45
Environmental & Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School. (2026, August 26). Regulating greenhouse gases for new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/regulating-greenhouse-gases-for-new-and-existing-fossil-fuel-fired-power-plants/
Declet-Barreto, J., & Rosenberg, A. A. (2022). Environmental justice and power plant emissions in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states. PLOS ONE, 17(7), e0271026. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271026
Donaghy, T. Q., Healy, N., Jiang, C. Y., & Pichon Battle, C. (2023). Fossil fuel racism in the United States: How phasing out coal, oil, and gas can protect communities. Energy Research & Social Science, 100, 103104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103104

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