President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to rescind an Obama-era ruling that currently serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation. The 2009 “endangerment finding” determined that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. Despite Obama’s EPA indicating the rule was based on science, there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is a pollutant or a danger to human health. Criteria pollutants (e.g., lead, sulfur dioxide, PM2.5) are a danger to public health, which was the reason for the passage of the Clean Air Act and their containment. Representative John Dingell, a co-author of the Clean Air Act, confirmed that carbon dioxide was not meant to be regulated under the act.
The finding, however, provided the legal underpinning for the EPA’s climate rules, which limited carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act. It was used during the Obama and Biden administrations to heavily regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and large industrial facilities. Despite these Democratic administrations claiming that they are for helping the poor, the “endangerment finding” is a regressive tax that hits poor households the hardest.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the final rule that the Trump EPA is preparing will remove the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify, and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles. It also repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions, and reporting obligations for industries. It is not expected to apply to rules governing emissions from power plants and other stationary sources such as oil-and-gas facilities, but repealing the finding could eventually roll back regulations that affect those facilities. The Trump EPA claims that the rollback of the “endangerment finding” would result in more than $1 trillion in regulation cuts and an average per-vehicle cost savings of more than $2,400.
It is expected that environmental groups will challenge the rescission in the court system and it will likely take years before the litigation is resolved. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration could decline to enforce rules and fines during the legal process. Several unsuccessful attempts to revise or repeal the “endangerment finding” have previously been undertaken.
Additionally, the Journal reports that President Trump will release a new executive order that directs the Defense Department to enter into agreements to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants. The administration will also provide funding to five coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky to recommission and upgrade the facilities. According to Energy Secretary Wright, revitalizing the U.S. coal industry would provide energy for artificial intelligence and re-industrialization and help contain the rise in electricity prices. The Tennessee Valley Authority is also expected to keep two coal plants operating after they were previously slated to shut down.
Some states, including Massachusetts, New York, and California, are opposed to the proposed rescission of the “endangerment finding,” arguing it would violate current law, Supreme Court precedent, and, allegedly, scientific consensus. These states could enact legislation themselves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of a federal standard for regulating them. If this were the case, blue states would again be increasing energy prices for their residents, as they are already doing with electricity prices and gasoline prices. This would increase the costs of goods and services in these states, in turn making life less affordable.
Background
According to MLive, the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970 with a focus on criteria pollutants (e.g., sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates, carbon monoxide) to address industrial and vehicle-specific emissions from these pollutants. Congress did not view the common compounds in the atmosphere — nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide — as air pollutants. When the first major amendments to the Clean Air Act were enacted in 1977, Congress chose not to pursue climate change under the act.
The EPA was given the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by the Supreme Court in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007, in which the court found that greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants. Massachusetts and several other states had petitioned the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles, indicating that they cause climate change and are harmful to the public’s health.
Analysis
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, EPA regulations sanctioned by the Endangerment Finding had little to no effect on the global environment, while causing hardships for Americans by limiting technological choice and raising domestic energy prices. U.S. regulatory policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions result in manufacturers and energy producers moving offshore, resulting in those emissions moving elsewhere, and often to countries with less efficient technology. As we explain in the 2026 Environmental Quality Index, “Given its high standards and significant output, U.S. energy production supports both economic growth and environmental quality more effectively than that of other countries.” Therefore, politicians should be encouraging more domestic energy production if they want to lower emissions, not stymie it.
For a more detailed review of what this reform means for policy makers see this brief prepared by AEA’s Kenny Stein on behalf of the Institute for Energy Research.
*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.