EPA Sets Stage For Court Fight After Taking Buzzsaw To Biden-Era Climate Rule

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed greenhouse gas regulations for coal- and natural gas-fired power plants Monday, setting up another likely legal fight over the federal government’s authority to regulate the power sector under the Clean Air Act.

The rollback would eliminate more than $300 billion in costs for the energy industry and allow utilities to make decisions based on the needs of their ratepayers rather than potentially shuttering aging power plants, according to the EPA. The repeal reverses Biden-era regulations requiring existing coal plants and certain new natural gas plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032 if they planned to continue operating past 2039.

“America should be producing more affordable, reliable energy, not forcing power plants and taxpayers to spend billions capturing and burying CO₂,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The EPA first proposed repealing the power plant greenhouse gas standards on June 11, 2025, arguing at the time that eliminating the regulations would reduce costs and bolster grid reliability.

“Repealing the power plant rule for greenhouse gas emissions is key to the Trump energy agenda,” Steve Milloy, senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and former Trump EPA transition team member, told DCNF. “Now, it will have to be defended in court.”

The legal fight over how the EPA can regulate power plant emissions stretches back to West Virginia and other states petitioning the Supreme Court in 2021 after the D.C. Circuit struck down the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule and its repeal of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, according to the Supreme Court docket in West Virginia v. EPA.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against the EPA in June 2022 in an opinion led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Court determined that the Clean Air Act did not give the EPA the authority to impose the Obama administration’s generation-shifting approach, which sought to move electricity production away from higher-emitting sources such as coal toward lower-emitting sources.

The EPA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The Court applied the major questions doctrine, reasoning that an agency claiming authority over an issue of major economic and political significance needs clear authorization from Congress, according to the Court’s opinion.

The decision did not categorically prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Biden administration subsequently issued a different set of regulations in April 2024 governing greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants, according to the EPA.

Those standards relied in part on carbon capture and sequestration to establish emissions requirements for certain coal-fired plants and new natural gas facilities.

The EPA is also proposing a separate rule addressing the underlying finding that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants significantly contribute to dangerous air pollution, according to Axios. Legal experts expect the administration’s position to draw challenges over its interpretation of the Clean Air Act.

“Challengers will almost certainly take aim at EPA’s claim that U.S. power plants are not significant contributors to global carbon dioxide levels and therefore future temperatures,” Isaac Orr, vice president of research at Always On Energy Research, told the DCNF.

Lawsuits from environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club challenging the rollback, are to be expected, Orr said.

The NRDC said the EPA’s action is based on flawed legal and technical analysis and “will not survive legal challenge.”

NRDC, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice and other environmental groups have also brought legal challenges against other recent EPA climate rollbacks, according to Earthjustice.

The power plant action follows the administration’s February repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which had provided the scientific foundation for federal greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act. The administration simultaneously eliminated federal greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, according to Reuters.

“The implications for the energy industry are massive,” Orr told the DCNF. “Repealing these rules was absolutely necessary to keep existing coal plants online, and perhaps more importantly, to facilitate the massive buildout of new natural gas power plants needed to meet the nation’s surging demand for electricity.”

That growing data center electricity demand has substantially changed the outlook for natural gas generation since the Biden-era rules were finalized in 2024, pointing to forecasts for significantly higher data center power consumption, Orr said.

“If Republicans maintain control of Congress, they should pass a bill that makes it clear that regulating emissions of greenhouse gases is a federal issue for Congress alone to address and that neither EPA nor the states can regulate emissions on their own,” Milloy said.