- The US Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to repeal federal carbon standards for existing coal plants and new gas generation.
- A companion measure could make it harder for a future administration to regulate power sector CO₂ under the Clean Air Act.
- The larger consequence is a weaker US market signal for carbon capture, with implications for UK technology suppliers, climate diplomacy and gas demand.
The Trump administration is poised to remove federal limits on CO₂ emissions from US coal and gas-fired power stations, dismantling one of the central climate measures introduced under former president Joe Biden.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could announce the repeal as early as Monday, according to the Associated Press. White House officials completed their review of two related measures on Friday: a final rule rescinding the 2024 standards and an accompanying proposal that could restrict future regulation of power station emissions.
The administration’s June 2025 proposal argued that emissions from US fossil fuelled power stations did not “contribute significantly” to dangerous global pollution – the threshold it said was necessary before EPA could regulate the source category under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act.
The rule being targeted required long-running coal stations and heavily used new gas plants to control 90% of their carbon pollution, principally using carbon capture and storage (CCS). Plants unwilling to install the technology could retire or operate less frequently under differentiated compliance pathways.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has framed repeal as an affordability and reliability measure, saying: “Affordable, reliable electricity is key to the American dream.”
The agency estimates that removing the standards would save the power sector $19 billion in compliance expenditure between 2026 and 2047, equivalent to about $1.2 billion annually.
Fight over regulatory authority
The EPA’s own regulatory impact analysis nevertheless projects that repeal would increase annual power sector emissions by 38 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2028, rising to 123 million tonnes in 2035. It did not assign a monetary value to those additional emissions, following a Trump executive order governing climate cost calculations.
By contrast, the EPA’s original analysis said the 2024 standards would avoid 1.38 billion tonnes of carbon pollution through 2047 and produce as much as $370 billion of climate and public health net benefits. Those estimates reflect different policy assumptions and should not be treated as a direct like-for-like cost comparison.
Environmental organisations are preparing litigation. Environmental Defense Fund general counsel Vickie Patton said repeal would impose “enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families”.
The legal contest will revisit the boundaries established by the Supreme Court’s 2022 West Virginia v EPA ruling. That judgment restricted EPA’s ability to force system-wide changes in the electricity mix. The Biden administration consequently based its replacement rule on equipment installed at individual plants – particularly CCS.
Opponents contend that large-scale capture remains insufficiently proven and excessively costly; supporters argue that Congress expressly authorised source-based emissions standards.
The former rule would have created one of the world’s largest mandated markets for post-combustion capture equipment, CO₂ pipelines and storage. Its removal weakens that demand signal just as British industrial clusters seek finance, suppliers and operating experience for their own CCS projects.
The companion measure may ultimately prove more consequential. If the EPA attempts to establish that power sector carbon emissions are legally too insignificant to regulate, the administration will be seeking not only to undo one rule but to narrow the room available to its successors. That would turn an already substantial emissions rollback into a longer-term redefinition of US climate authority.
