EPA to Scrap Landmark US Emissions Policy in Major Rollback (1)

The US Environmental Protection Agency plans this week to repeal a policy that provides the legal foundation for a raft of rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions, marking President Donald Trump’s most consequential retreat from the fight against climate change.

A move to scrap the Obama-era endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, is expected as early as Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the details. The policy underpins rules including federal emissions standards for cars and trucks.

“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was quoted as tellingthe Wall Street Journal, which first reported the planned timing.

The EPA sent a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget last month and a “final rule will be published once it has completed interagency review,” the agency said in a statement, referring to the endangerment finding as “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history.” The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A decision to repeal the finding has been anticipated for months after the EPA first proposed doing so in July, and is seen as laying the groundwork for a further unwinding of climate protections in the US. Trump’s White House last month completed a new withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and exited multiple prominent United Nations bodies working on the issue, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The retreat from climate action under Trump has been opposed by leading scientific experts and comes as the impacts of global warming have been intensifying. Last year was the third-hottest on record, according to temperature data released last month by three independent agencies.

Environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, have pledged to challenge any decision to scrap the endangerment finding in court.

The Trump administration is also set to announce funding awards to upgrade and support the operation of a number of US coal-fired power plants, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Energy Department last year outlined a plan to provide as much as $100 million in funding for the projects, part of the administration’s broader efforts to prolong the generation of electricity from coal and the operation of power plants that had been on track for closure. The department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net;
Zahra Hirji in Washington at zhirji@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Aaron Rutkoff at arutkoff@bloomberg.net

David Stringer, Kanupriya Kapoor

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