The US Environmental Protection Agency on Monday eliminated requirements that fossil fuel-fired power plants install technical controls to curb their emissions and, alongside that action, proposed permanently releasing the country's largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions from federal oversight, according to The Japan Times. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at the rollout that the agency would not "bend the law to climate alarmism or climate radicalism at all at the Trump EPA." The article states the administration's rollbacks of federal greenhouse gas rules since January 2025 have shifted US energy use and set back planned cuts to planet-warming pollution by roughly a decade. The Japan Times puts the EPA's own estimate of the additional carbon dioxide from the power plant repeal at 533 million metric tons by 2040, more than most countries' annual carbon footprint.
EPA eliminates power plant emissions controls and proposes ending federal oversight of the sector
The US Environmental Protection Agency on Monday eliminated requirements that fossil fuel-fired power plants install technical controls to curb their emissions and, alongside that action, proposed permanently releasing the country's largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions from federal oversight, according to The Japan Times. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at the rollout that the agency would not "bend the law to climate alarmism or climate radicalism at all at the Trump EPA." The article states the administration's rollbacks of federal greenhouse gas rules since January 2025 have shifted US energy use and set back planned cuts to planet-warming pollution by roughly a decade. The Japan Times puts the EPA's own estimate of the additional carbon dioxide from the power plant repeal at 533 million metric tons by 2040, more than most countries' annual carbon footprint.
According to The Japan Times, the power plant repeal was preceded in February by the agency's removal of similar EPA climate standards for cars and trucks and by the reversal of the legal basis for those rules, known as the endangerment finding — a landmark 2009 EPA scientific ruling that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare. Janet McCabe, who served as deputy EPA administrator under President Joe Biden, is quoted saying the Obama and Biden administrations were "very methodical about looking at the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions," and that the pre-Trump path of steeper cuts was assembled over decades from measures including fuel-economy standards and pre-existing air pollution laws.
The Japan Times cites an analysis by Energy Innovation, described as a nonpartisan energy and policy think tank, estimating that the collective effect of the administration's moves could mean the United States, the world's second-largest emitter after China, contributes roughly 1 gigaton more in 2040 than it otherwise would — described as the emissions equivalent of the energy used by 134 million houses in a year. Under that analysis, US emissions would still fall by 2040 but only to a level roughly equal to what they would have been around 2030 under previous policies. Robbie Orvis, Energy Innovation's senior director of modeling and analysis, is quoted saying, "The one positive note is we're still on a downward decline even notwithstanding all of the policy changes — it's just nowhere near as fast as it was nor is it anywhere close to where we should be going."
The EPA said in a statement that power plants have no material impact on global climate change, according to The Japan Times. The article also notes that the United Nations reported earlier this month that the goal of limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius is all but lost, and that many scientists now say global warming is accelerating.
On coal use, The Japan Times reports that US coal consumption has trended down for years as utilities shifted to cheaper and cleaner sources, that usage gained last year, climbing 10 percent from 2024 after Trump took steps to support coal power including aid to modernize plants and orders keeping several facilities running beyond planned retirement dates, and that much of that rebound was tied to high natural gas prices and cold winter weather. Usage this year is expected to decline. The article says the now-repealed mandates called for existing coal plants to effectively capture most of their emissions in the 2030s or close, and that without that deadline power companies can decide how long to run existing plants, with growing demand from data centers and industrial growth creating an incentive to keep them open longer.
Scott Segal, a Washington-based partner at the energy-focused law firm Bracewell, is quoted saying that rescinding carbon capture and sequestration mandates "removes a very expensive, technically uncertain obligation." The Japan Times notes the measures also come as data centers are pushing up US power demand, and that the Biden administration had promoted clean energy adoption largely through the Inflation Reduction Act's funding for solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars — measures the article says the EPA and Congress, under Trump's direction, have now largely dismantled.
For contrast, The Japan Times reports that China, the world's top emitter, has seen emissions flat or falling for more than two years on the back of a record renewable energy buildout that is beginning to cut into fossil fuel power generation, and that China recently pledged a greater role in international climate governance after the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
- The two supplied sources do not cover the same event: Deutsche Welle reports on a proposed AI self-regulatory body involving OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, while The Japan Times reports on the EPA power plant rule repeal. No fact in this report could be corroborated across the two outlets, and every substantive detail here rests on a single source, The Japan Times.
- No position, comment or statement from US power plant operators, utilities or coal and gas companies — the entities directly affected by the repeal — appears in any supplied source.
- None of the sources establishes the legal or procedural status of the repeal and the accompanying proposal: whether the proposal is subject to public comment, when either measure takes effect, or whether litigation is expected.
- The accuracy of the EPA's 533 million metric ton estimate and of Energy Innovation's roughly 1 gigaton figure is not independently verified in either source.
- No statement or quantification from the Trump administration beyond Zeldin's quote is provided, and no estimate of the combined emissions effect of all the rollbacks is given other than the Energy Innovation analysis.
- The Japan Times article is truncated at its conclusion ("To be sure, government policy"), so any additional caveats or counterpoints in that piece are not available.
- The sources do not establish what the replacement regulatory framework, if any, for power plant emissions would be, nor how states or regional grid operators would respond.
- The Japan Times — original — by The Japan Times
- Deutsche Welle — by Rana Taha
Read the original at The Japan Times