The United States has made solid progress in the decarbonized energy sector. It’s time to rewind. According to a report from the New York Times, the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration has drafted a plan that will eliminate all hats of greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas power plants.
The proposal is led by the new EPA head, and Lee Zeldin, a long-term climate change skeptic, shows that burning fossil fuels in power plants “does not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution”, which seems to suggest good pollution, but that’s something else.
Depending on the time, the abolition of the agency will apply to all greenhouse gas emission standards currently applicable to fossil fuel power plants. This would effectively revoke much of the Biden Administration’s efforts to clean up the energy sector, including the requirement for coal-fired power plants to capture carbon pollution before it leaves the chimney and stores the carbon chimney, and require gas plants to use newer technologies to generate less emissions.
“We are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing reliable and affordable energy for all Americans,” Celding said in a statement to the Times.
The U.S. power sector remains one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gases, generally second only to the transportation industry, and is responsible for a quarter of all carbon emissions. New power plants are much cleaner than existing infrastructure by Biden administration standards. According to a report by Cleanview, 96% of new power plants built in 2024 are carbon-free. According to the Biden-era EPA, its standards require existing coal-fired and new gas power plants to control 90% of their carbon pollution, finding ways to capture or offset emissions.
These demands could disappear completely under Trump’s leadership, opening up more possibilities for explosive power plants to be built without the need to work to mitigate potential harm.
Even if the objection to Trump’s EPA is that it does not believe that fossil fuel emissions will lead to climate change, there are still many real and tangible adverse effects of burning fuel. A study published in 2023 found that pollution from coal-fired power plants could result in more than 460,000 excess deaths, largely due to air-based pollution caused by burning coal. So forget about the long-term destruction of the earth becoming hotter and hotter – people are now dying due to these plants.
