Washington, D.C. – The Trump Administration announced today it has finalized the full repeal of the EPA Carbon Rule and proposed a rule to rescind the endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. In response, America’s Power president and CEO Michelle Bloodworth released the following statement:
“America’s Power commends President Trump for repealing the Biden-era Carbon Rule and proposing to rescind the endangerment finding for power plants. Overturning these examples of EPA overreach will help preserve and strengthen the U.S. coal fleet, protect grid reliability, and shield electricity consumers from higher costs at a time of surging demand from data centers, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing.
“The Endangerment Finding provided the regulatory basis for the Biden EPA to impose unlawful and unachievable carbon performance standards for controlling CO2 emissions from power plants. If implemented, these standards would have threatened electric grid reliability by forcing the premature retirement of much of the U.S. coal fleet. Furthermore, the Endangerment Finding itself has significant analytic shortcomings, including its failure to adequately account for the fact that the U.S. coal fleet is responsible for slightly more than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while China and India together account for approximately 35 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Carbon Rule, in addition to being illegal, would have left electricity providers with just two options: shutter their coal power plants by 2032 or comply with unrealistic carbon standards, such as requiring carbon capture and storage technology that is exorbitantly expensive and not adequately demonstrated. Retrofitting a single power plant with this technology could require capital investments of several billion dollars, with these project costs in some cases approaching or even exceeding the cost of constructing an entirely new power plant. As a result, the Carbon Rule would have led to widespread retirements of coal power plants desperately needed to keep pace with America’s exploding demand for electricity. By repealing this rule, EPA estimates Americans will save approximately $1.2 billion in regulatory costs each year.
“This summer, the National Coal Council released ‘Maximizing the Value of the U.S. Coal Fleet,’ its July 2026 report to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. That report concluded that carbon regulations have the ‘greatest impact’ on the existing coal fleet and are a ‘major impediment’ to building new coal power plants.
“By repealing the Carbon Rule and proposing to rescind the Endangerment Finding, the Trump Administration is demonstrating its commitment to ensuring that America can benefit from its abundant coal reserves and the reliable power coal provides. We urge EPA to finalize the endangerment finding rescission as quickly as possible to ensure that a future administration cannot resurrect rules designed to shut down the coal fleet.
“Today’s actions by the Trump administration will protect American families and businesses from spending billions to comply with illegal regulations and making energy less affordable. According to EPA, repealing the Biden Carbon Rule will save utilities and ratepayers roughly $1.2 billion a year.
“The repeal of the Carbon Rule and the rescission of the power plant Endangerment Finding eliminate the two biggest regulatory threats facing the U.S. coal fleet and our nation’s electricity supply. These threats would have shut down more than 170 coal power plants in 37 states and made the electricity grid less reliable.
“The U.S. coal fleet helps satisfy exploding electricity demand, and it provides attributes that are necessary for grid reliability, especially fuel security. Coal power plants are resilient to extreme weather and more dependable than wind and solar power, and they make electricity affordable and electricity prices more stable.
“Last, the U.S. has the largest coal reserves of any country in the world, including China and Russia. Preserving the coal fleet allows the U.S. to maintain energy dominance by taking advantage of our most abundant energy resource.”