Power plants that burn coal, gas and oil put out about a quarter of all the climate pollution in the United States. In 2024, the government set a limit on it.

On Monday, September 14, 2026, Trump's EPA announced that limit is going away.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the announcement at a meeting of energy ministers from the world's biggest economies in Houston, Common Dreams reported. And the agency isn't stopping there: it is also rolling out a proposal meant to keep any future administration from regulating carbon pollution from power plants at all.

This didn't come out of nowhere. When EPA first proposed the repeal in 2025, the agency put out a press release full of Republicans cheering it on. Fifteen of them are candidates we track. Four signed a letter asking EPA to finish the job faster. Here's what they pushed for, and what it costs.

What the rule actually did

In April 2024, the Biden EPA finalized standards requiring coal plants that planned to keep running long-term, and new gas plants that run around the clock, to control 90 percent of their carbon pollution.

The agency estimated what that would buy:

• 1.38 billion metric tons less carbon pollution through 2047 — the same as a year's emissions from 328 million gas-powered cars.
• In 2035 alone, up to 1,200 fewer early deaths, 1,900 fewer new cases of asthma, and 360,000 fewer cases of asthma symptoms.
• Up to $370 billion in climate and public health benefits, after costs, over the next two decades.

Those are the benefits being thrown out.

What Trump's EPA says it saves

When Zeldin proposed the repeal in June 2025, EPA said it would save the power industry $19 billion over two decades — about $1.2 billion a year.

That's the trade: a savings for power companies on one side, and on the other, EPA's own earlier estimate of up to $370 billion in benefits and up to 1,200 early deaths prevented in 2035 alone.

To get there, the Trump EPA argued that carbon pollution from power plants does "not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution" under the law. Meredith Hankins, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote that power plants make up a quarter of all U.S. emissions, and "if the US power sector were a nation, it would be the world's fifth-largest emitter after China, the United States, India, and Russia."

Zeldin has not been shy about who he's working for. Earlier this summer, at a meeting of the National Coal Council, he bragged that "many of the items" on the coal industry's "wish list are now done."

"Tearing down our national protections against climate pollution from power plants will have enormous costs for the health, safety and well-being of families across the country," Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said, according to the Associated Press. "Americans everywhere are already suffering from record-breaking heat, more dangerous floods and storms, and skyrocketing insurance costs."

The Republicans who cheered it

On June 13, 2025, EPA published a press release titled "What They Are Saying: Leaders Praise EPA's Proposed Repeal". It quoted governors, industry groups — the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the American Coal Council — and members of Congress. The same announcement also proposed repealing 2024 updates to a separate rule on mercury and toxic air pollution from power plants.

These 15 are all on our report cards. In their own words:

Senators

• Tom Cotton (Arkansas): "Arkansans shouldn't have to pay higher energy bills just to satisfy some left-wing radical climate agenda."
• Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), who chairs the Senate committee that oversees EPA: "I have long opposed this rule… I'm thrilled that EPA Administrator Zeldin is reversing Biden-era regulations that would turn off affordable coal and natural gas energy generation."
• Jon Husted (Ohio): "I support the EPA's decision to cut Biden-era bureaucratic red tape for American coal and natural gas producers."
• Jim Risch (Idaho): "Biden's woke climate rule stifled energy production and drove up costs for American families."

Representatives

• Brett Guthrie (Kentucky), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee: "I was proud to stand with Administrator Zeldin today as he announced these measures."
• Troy Balderson (Ohio): "The EPA is taking desperately needed action to end the disastrous 'Green New Deal.'"
• Lauren Boebert (Colorado): "I've fought hard to get these ridiculous Biden-era rules tossed in the garbage."
• Julie Fedorchak (North Dakota): "One of my first actions in Congress was urging the repeal of these and 18 other Biden rules."
• Morgan Griffith (Virginia): "Administrator Zeldin's actions help kickstart the unraveling of the Obama-Biden-Harris 'War on Coal.'"
• Dan Meuser (Pennsylvania): "Repealing these Biden-era rules will help so many businesses continue to operate, expand, invest…"
• Carol Miller (West Virginia): "Thank you to Administrator Zeldin and President Trump for supporting American coal and bolstering our energy production!"
• Riley Moore (West Virginia): "The Green New Scam is over and American energy dominance is back."
• Michael Rulli (Ohio): "I stood alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as the agency announced the repeal of Biden's overreaching 'Clean Power Plan 2.0' and harmful MATS regulations."
• Adrian Smith (Nebraska): "Administrator Zeldin is right to eliminate them."
• Lloyd Smucker (Pennsylvania): "Lee Zeldin is spot on in ending the Biden Administration's 'Clean Power Plan 2.0.'"

"Clean Power Plan 2.0" is the name Republicans gave the 2024 standards.

Not one of those statements mentions asthma, early deaths, or the benefits EPA had estimated.

The ones who asked EPA to hurry

Three months later, on September 17, 2025, Republicans on the Senate environment committee sent EPA a letter asking EPA to "expeditiously finalize the proposed rule." Ten senators signed it. Four are candidates we track:

• Shelley Moore Capito, who led it
• Jon Husted
• Dan Sullivan (Alaska)
• Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)

Capito and Husted are on both lists.

A pattern, not a one-off

This is not the only time these Republicans have sided with coal plants and the companies that run them:

• Griffith took $67,000 from Dominion's PAC and then asked Virginia's governor to protect Dominion's coal plant — a plant Dominion's own numbers say will cost ratepayers at least $472 million this decade.
• Balderson wrote a bill that would make burning gas legally "clean" and wind and solar legally unreliable — and force EPA, the Energy Department and Interior to rewrite their energy rules, grants and policies using his definitions.

And it's not the only way Zeldin's EPA is loosening the rules on polluters. It is also moving to gut leak rules at 700,000 oil and gas wells, and another Republican, Troy Downing of Montana, wrote a bill to permanently repeal the rule that would clean up America's dirtiest coal plant — in his own district.

What the record shows

On September 14, 2026, Trump's EPA announced it is scrapping the limits on carbon pollution from coal and gas power plants — standards the Biden EPA estimated would prevent up to 1,200 early deaths and 360,000 cases of asthma symptoms in 2035, and deliver up to $370 billion in benefits over two decades. When EPA proposed the repeal in 2025, it put out a press release quoting 15 Republicans on our report cards cheering it: Tom Cotton, Shelley Moore Capito, Jon Husted, Jim Risch, Brett Guthrie, Troy Balderson, Lauren Boebert, Julie Fedorchak, Morgan Griffith, Dan Meuser, Carol Miller, Riley Moore, Michael Rulli, Adrian Smith and Lloyd Smucker. Capito, Husted, Dan Sullivan and Pete Ricketts then signed a letter asking EPA to finish the repeal quickly.

Source

Common Dreams: "'Actively Malevolent': Trump EPA to Eviscerate Rules on Planet-Heating Pollution From Power Plants" (September 14, 2026). Additional reporting from the Associated Press. Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images, via Common Dreams.