The Trump administration continues its wholesale assault on the environment with it latest deregulatory action on power plant pollution — the most devestating yet on greenhouse gasses.
The move comes after the hottest summer ever recorded produced intense heat waves, fires, and other climate-related disasters.
These protections are especially vital in the face of explosive data center growth, which place huge demands on the nation’s electric grid.
President Trump has long called human-made climate change a hoax and is moving ahead with its latest attack on our protections against planet-warming pollution, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
The global nonprofit environmental advocacy group says in a new statement the administration’s actions would gut federal Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) limits on climate changing pollution emitted by gas, oil and coal-fired power plants.
“What is worse, EPA’s own analysis found that eliminating these protections would cause thousands of premature deaths and tens of billions of dollars in increased health costs for Americans across the country,” it states.
Roughly 44% of Americans—about 152.3 million people—still live in counties with failing grades for ozone or particle pollution. Overall nationwide progress has stalled or reversed due to environmental factors, according to the American Lung Association’s 2026 “State of the Air” report.
The Trump administration finalized its latest rule last week (Sept 14) to completely repeal the Biden administration’s landmark 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards regulation for fossil-fuel-fired power plants.
The repeal is part of the administration’s broader effort to prop up aging, polluting coal plants and block clean, affordable power – increasing electricity and health costs for Americans, the group states.
The Trump administration has announced over $1 billion in subsidies to prop up existing uneconomic plants and build new ones – even though 99% of coal plants cost more to run than it would cost to replace them with clean energy.
The Trump administration is illegally mandating that six coal plants remain open past their retirement dates, despite local and state plans to replace them with cleaner and cheaper energy resources, and despite the fact that many of the plants have broken down or have not produced electricity at all.
The cost to keep those plants on life support amounts to almost $1.5 million per day – $440 million so far. The administration has directed the owners of these plants to recover those costs from American families and businesses.
The Trump administration has handed out expansive, illegal Clean Air Act exemptions to allow 71 coal-fired power plants across 24 states to ignore modern pollution limits for mercury, arsenic and other toxic pollutants. Many coal plants admitted that they already had technologies to lower their pollution.
At the same time, the administration has been blocking, delaying and canceling clean energy projects that can provide low-cost power. These efforts have met with a series of legal defeats in the courts.
An EDF preliminary analysis indicates the increased pollution resulting from the latest rule would cause more than $1 trillion in additional health costs and more than 80,000 additional premature deaths through 2047.
It would also result in more than $1.8 trillion in cumulative climate-related harms over the same time.
Coal- gas- and oil-fired power plants are responsible for about one-quarter of our nation’s total greenhouse gases, second only to the transportation sector, the group states.
Fossil fuel power plants account for roughly 24% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from coal and natural gas plants generating electricity.
For more than 40 years, fossil-fuel plants were the chief source of greenhouse gases, but the advent of wind and solar energy has reduced plant emissions. Transportation now claims the top spot.
Biden’s 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards would have establish achievable emission limits that allow power companies to reduce pollution through an array of available low and zero-emitting solutions, the group said.
EPA’s own estimates found that the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards would save more than 1,200 lives in 2035 alone, would prevent thousands of asthma attacks and other illnesses, and would provide $370 billion in net climate and health benefits through 2047.
The federal Clean Air Act requires that EPA to issue pollution standards reflecting the “best system of emissions reduction” for harmful pollutants, including climate pollution. The Supreme Court recognized the EPA’s role in its 2011 decision in American Electric Power v. Connecticut.
Clean energy solutions are more affordable and abundant than ever, support grid reliability, and create jobs in communities across our country,” the group stated.
What’s more, coal-fired generation is less economical than cleaner energy alternatives,” according to a paper by Analysis Group expert Sue Tierney.
A 2025 Department of Energy Report also found that solar and wind are the largest employers of all electric power generation industries.
A senior policy adviser to President Trump described the administration’s approach as “concierge, white glove service” for the fossil fuel industry.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”