EPA Repeals Biden's Coal Power Emissions Rule — SkimNews
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- EPA announced Monday it will wipe away all federal regulations for carbon emissions from the electricity sector, using the same "uncertain climate science" and "consumer savings on power bills" rationale it deployed earlier this year to repeal motor vehicle climate rules.
- Lee Zeldin, Trump's EPA chief, declared at an international energy summit in Texas that "the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy," and that the agency is "working to go even further so that American energy can be fully unleashed."
- The Biden 2024 rule would have either forced utilities to retire coal plants in the 2030s or equip them with carbon capture; the Biden administration projected the rule would prevent $370 billion in health damages, hundreds of thousands of asthma flare-ups, and more than 1,200 premature deaths by 2035.
- Coal power has already been declining for two decades as shale fracking made natural gas cheaper, cutting US power-sector emissions by almost half — yet the AI data center boom is now driving renewed demand and giving aging plants a temporary second life.
- Southern Company scrapped its plan to retire a major Mississippi coal plant by 2028 after data center demand materialized, pushing retirement into the 2030s; its previous efforts to install carbon capture at coal units ended in failure.
- A federal court ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration's separate order keeping some coal plants online past planned retirements was unlawful — even as the EPA pushes the new, broader regulatory repeal.
Why it matters: The repeal strips federal regulatory "teeth" behind any coal phaseout signal, ceding the fight to market forces — and the AI data center boom is already tipping those forces back toward coal, with Southern Company now planning to keep its Mississippi plant running into the 2030s. Health stakes are concrete: the Biden rule had been projected to prevent $370 billion in damages and over 1,200 premature deaths.
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