The Environmental Protection Agency is considering significantly strengthening proposed limits on planet-warming pollution from power plants — a crucial part of President Biden’s climate agenda — according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions have been made.
The discussions about toughening the standards, which are set to be released this month, have major implications for America’s fleet of power plants, which rank as the country’s second-largest contributor to climate change. They come as the administration weighs the political calculus of weakening or strengthening environmental regulations before the 2024 election.
In some cases, the Biden administration has finalized rules that are less stringent than the original proposals. With power plants, it appears to be heading in the opposite direction.
In May 2023, the EPA issued a proposed rule that called for drastically curbing greenhouse gas emissions from three categories of power plants: existing coal plants, existing gas plants and new gas plants. But in February, the agency said the final rule would no longer cover existing gas plants, disappointing some environmental advocates.
Now, EPA officials are considering strengthening the requirements for new gas plants, according to the people familiar with the matter. Specifically, officials are in talks about having the final rule apply to new large gas plants that operate more than 40 percent of the time, rather than those that operate 50 percent of the time as the proposal had envisioned.
The change could affect the majority of new gas plants built in the United States, and it could have a significant climate impact. According to the EPA’s modeling, it could prevent up to 10.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year — equivalent to taking 2.5 million cars off the nation’s roads for a year.
EPA spokesman Tim Carroll declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing deliberations. “The draft final rule is currently with the Office of Management and Budget under interagency review,” he said in an email.
Many utility companies are planning for a surge in gas plant construction to meet explosive power demand fueled by electricity-hungry data centers, and the EPA rule could affect these plans. In contrast, many coal plants are shutting down regardless of federal regulations, as they struggle to compete economically with cheaper gas and renewable energy.
The owner of the last two coal plants in New England announced last month that the facilities will close by 2025 and 2028 as part of a settlement with environmental groups. The Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, will be converted to solar farms and battery systems that can store electricity generated by wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Coal plants are barely hanging on economically without this rule,” said Matthew Davis, vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters. “In most places across the country, new renewable sources of power are cheaper than continuing to run a coal plant.”
The League of Conservation Voters and other environmental groups had urged the EPA to toughen the power plant standards. In contrast, the Edison Electric Institute, the top lobbying group for U.S. utilities, had argued in public comments that overly ambitious rules could delay the construction of gas plants and undermine the reliability of the electric grid.
The Biden administration has recently weakened other climate rules in the face of mounting political pressure and threatened legal challenges. Last month, the EPA finalized emissions limits for passenger cars that gave automakers more time to ramp up sales of electric vehicles — an election-year concession to labor unions that had raised concerns about a rapid shift to EVs.
Also last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission finalized a scaled-back rule requiring corporations to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and contributions to climate change. Unlike the proposal, the final rule does not mandate the disclosure of emissions generated by customers and suppliers, which can account for the vast majority of oil companies’ carbon footprints.
Republican attorneys general and business groups nonetheless challenged the SEC rule in federal court, arguing that the commission lacks the authority to force companies to weigh in on “controversial” climate issues. The SEC on Thursday paused the rule’s implementation pending the outcome of the legal battles.