The Environmental Protection Agency did more than erase a major climate rule Monday. It also opened a second front designed to make it harder for a future administration to put comparable limits back.
On September 14, the EPA finalized the repeal of the Biden administration’s 2024 greenhouse-gas standards for coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants. At the same time, it proposed a broader legal finding that the agency lacks authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the power sector’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
Together, the actions turn a policy rollback into a potentially longer-lasting fight over who gets to regulate nearly a quarter of U.S. climate pollution.
One rule is being repealed now
The immediate action targets the carbon standards adopted in April 2024. Those rules would have required many coal plants and new baseload gas plants to sharply reduce emissions, with carbon capture and storage serving as the central compliance technology for several categories of generators.
The EPA’s own rule history shows that Administrator Lee Zeldin proposed the repeal in June 2025. The final repeal is expected to take effect shortly after it appears in the Federal Register, according to the Associated Press.
The administration argues the standards would make it harder and more expensive to keep existing plants open or build new capacity as electricity demand rises. At a Houston event held alongside a G20 energy-ministers meeting, Zeldin said the changes would help the country build more generating infrastructure.
The second move reaches beyond the 2024 standards
The separate proposal could prove even more consequential. The EPA is seeking to establish that greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel power plants do not contribute significantly enough to dangerous air pollution to trigger regulation under the Clean Air Act.
That proposal is not yet final. The AP reports that the agency expects to complete it next year, after the federal rulemaking process. If finalized and upheld in court, it could constrain later administrations that try to restore power-sector carbon rules using the same statutory authority.
Reuters reported that power plants produce nearly one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse-gas pollution, making electricity the country’s second-largest emitting sector after transportation. U.S. power-sector emissions rose 4% in 2025, according to Energy Information Administration data cited by Reuters.
The numbers reveal two radically different calculations
The economic case depends heavily on what is counted. Reuters reported that Zeldin put direct industry compliance savings at $370 million. The AP, citing the agency, said the repeal would save industry more than $300 billion in costs, a much broader figure.
The earlier EPA analysis reached the opposite bottom line. The Biden administration estimated its 2024 rule would cut 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2047 and deliver $370 billion in net benefits, Reuters reported. Environmental and public-health groups say the rollback ignores damages from heat, storms, wildfires and air pollution that do not appear on a utility’s compliance ledger.
The distinction matters: a rule can cost power companies money to follow while still producing larger benefits for the public. The coming legal challenges will focus on statutory authority, but the political argument will revolve around that clash between near-term electricity costs, grid reliability and longer-term health and climate risks.
What changes—and what does not
The federal carbon standards are going away, but the repeal does not wipe out every environmental requirement for power plants. Separate federal rules addressing conventional pollutants can still apply, and states retain their own authority to require emissions reductions.
Utilities also continue to make decisions based on fuel prices, aging equipment, state policy and the cost of competing technologies. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, welcomed the repeal of carbon-capture-based standards while also calling for regulatory certainty, Reuters reported.
That certainty is unlikely to arrive soon. Environmental organizations have promised litigation, and the proposed barrier against future greenhouse-gas rules must still go through public review before becoming final. Monday’s announcement settles the administration’s position—but it begins the court fight over whether that position can last.
