by Lindsay Boettiger
There will no longer be restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal and natural gas power plants in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday, September 14.
The revocation of these limits on climate-heating pollution is a stark reversal of the Biden administration’s 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which required existing coal-fired and new gas-fired plants to control 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions through either the installation of carbon capture equipment on smokestacks, or co-firing with gas. These standards were projected to see the reduction of 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047, and $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits over the next twenty years.
This reversal of these standards was first proposed by the Trump Administration last year and is an action that the EPA claims will save over $300 billion and make energy costs more affordable for American families and businesses. In the news release, the administration claimed that removing greenhouse gas emission regulations will “unleash the full potential of America’s vast energy resources, including coal and natural gas.”
This decision comes after the Trump administration’s revocation of the landmark 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding for motor vehicles in February 2026, which determined that greenhouses gases “threaten public health and welfare of current and future generations.” Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professor of Legal Studies and Business at Wharton Sarah Light noted that there has been a “strong commitment, both in the press and in executive orders, that the current administration wants to undo all greenhouse gas emissions regulation, both from motor vehicles and stationary sources.” The undoing of these regulations is a step towards preventing all future regulation of greenhouse gas pollution.
The 2009 Endangerment Finding established, under the Clean Air Act, that greenhouse emissions constitute air pollutants which endanger public health and welfare. The finding allowed subsequent EPAs to issue rules and regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions on new motor vehicles and power plants. By revoking both the 2009 Endangerment Finding and the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the Trump administration’s EPA is both rolling back limits on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, but also undoing the precedent that the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to issue any greenhouse gas regulations at all.
States are not necessarily able to fill in all the gaps of federal rollbacks on greenhouse gas emissions. While they have some power, “it is not unlimited,” according to Light. She provided California as an example. California is the only state authorized under the Clean Air Act to issue emission standards for new motor vehicles. To do this, the state requires a waiver from the EPA – which they have always been able to obtain with previous administrations. However, the current administration is revoking or attempting to revoke these waivers. She continued, “there is at least an attempt in place to prevent the states from adopting more stringent standards, such that nobody would be able to regulation greenhouse gas emissions.”
The retraction of these regulations was announced at a meeting of G20 energy ministers in Houston, Texas on Monday, September 14, where Lee Zeldin accused the Biden and Obama administrations of waging a “war on coal,” and downplayed the severity of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, stating that they “have no material impact on global climate change. In fact, if all carbon dioxides [sic] were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no meaningful climate impact.”
This view is vehemently countered by scientists and climate experts, who say that this change will negatively impact Americans’ health and continue to deteriorate the environment; power plants are the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States.
Light anticipates that the removal of carbon and greenhouse gas emission regulations has the potential to “limit initiatives or entrepreneurial activity,” in the United States regarding clean energy and climate change action; there simply won’t be the market or incentives to develop or implement these new technologies. Despite this, Light adds, “there may be other forces and incentives at play, either market-based ones or legal regimes.” Many corporations are global, so will continue to have incentives to proceed with carbon-mitigation strategies and technologies, to stay in compliance elsewhere.
The repeal of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards is expected to take effect after its publication in the Federal Register but will face legal challenges. On Thursday, September 17, 2026, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin (represented by Clean Air Task Force), and the Environmental Defense Fund sued to stop the EPA’s repeal of these standards for power plant carbon pollution.
Lindsay Boettiger is currently a Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture student at the Weitzman School of Design.