This week the Trump Administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized repeal of all Biden-era regulations on power plant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In a new insight, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Shuting Pomerleau walks through this first phase of the administration’s effort to fully repeal U.S. power plant GHG regulations.

Key points:

• This move represents significant progress in repealing all power plant GHG regulations, with the repeal of remaining Obama-era limits to be finalized in the months ahead.
• EPA estimates that the finalized repeal of Biden-era GHG regulations on power plants would save $310 billion in direct compliance costs, and the pending repeal of President Obama’s regulations would save an additional $370 million—these cost saving estimates are an-order-of-magnitude jump from the preliminary estimates of $9.6–$19 billion, a revision driven by soaring artificial intelligence data center energy demand, per EPA’s analysis.
• When a full repeal of all the regulations is finalized, it will be subject to substantial legal challenges across the country, which would create significant policy uncertainty for investors, energy developers, utilities, and other players in the U.S. electricity market, adding to the broad uncertainty in the current federal climate policy landscape.

Read the analysis.