EPA to propose rolling back climate rule for power plants Wednesday

The Trump administration will move Wednesday to repeal federal limits on power plant climate pollution, attacking the Biden era's most ambitious attempt to use regulations to rein in heat-trapping gases from the electric grid, according to six people familiar with the situation.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will announce the repeal of the power plant carbon dioxide rule along with a separate regulation to curb hazardous air pollution such as mercury during an event at agency headquarters, the people said.

The two repeal proposals are the most important EPA regulatory actions of President Donald Trump’s second term to date. Without offering details, EPA said Tuesday that Zeldin will make a "major policy announcement" at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Scrapping the Biden-era power plant rule would effectively shelve regulations for the nation's second-biggest producer of climate pollution — the electricity sector — which accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.

The move will come one day after the executive director of Trump's National Energy Dominance Council, Jarrod Agen, defended the administration's focus on coal and natural gas for maintaining the reliability of the electric grid. Speaking at POLITICO's annual Energy Summit on Tuesday, Agen said Trump is not considering renewable sources such as solar power for the nation's energy mix, despite those technologies' support from some GOP lawmakers as well as business leaders such as Elon Musk.

“The president’s priorities are around turning around fossil fuels,” Agen said.

One of the people familiar with EPA's plans said the agency does not anticipate writing a replacement rule because it is "hopeful" the agency will prevail in a separate effort to unwind its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases harm the public. That declaration, known as the endangerment finding, forms the legal basis for regulating those emissions.

The two Clean Air Act rules that Zeldin will ditch were central to the Biden administration’s power sector strategy. The climate rule aimed to curb greenhouse gases by requiring new gas-fired power plants and existing coal-fired units to capture and store their greenhouse gas emissions by the 2030s.

EPA has said it plans to finalize repeal of the rules by the end of this year.